A design founder, not a freelancer
Someone who owns product and design with you full-time, with the incentives of a co-founder.
For design-led founders in their first year.
Design First Fund invests time, not just money. We place an experienced design founder in your startup for the first year, in exchange for a modest salary and a share of equity — so you build it right from day one.
Y Combinator is calling for more design founders.
In its Requests for Startups, YC asked for more designers to start companies. As AI makes software faster and cheaper to build, how a product looks, feels and works becomes the difference. Read YC’s requests →
With AI, any team can ship features in days. When everyone can build the same thing, the product people prefer is the one that's designed better.
Markets are filling up with lookalike AI products. People pick the one they understand, trust and enjoy using. That's design and brand, not features.
Name, product, interface, tone: they're set in the first year. Getting them right then is cheap. Fixing them later means a rebrand and a rebuild.
A designer you hire executes decisions. A design founder makes them with you, and owns the outcome like you do.
Tell us what you're building and who's on the team.
We pair you with a design founder and agree terms.
Twelve months side by side, shipping the product.
Someone who owns product and design with you full-time, with the incentives of a co-founder.
A small salary and a share of the company — affordable before you've raised much.
Your design founder brings Made for Interaction's foundations: design system, accounts, payments, infrastructure.
After year one you keep a design culture, a system and the option to hire them on.
The best AI products of the next decade won't win on the model. They'll win on product and brand: the things a design founder brings.
Design First Fund puts a senior design founder on your team for year one, paid mostly in equity, so you can build that edge before you can afford to hire it.
Because AI has made building software fast and cheap for everyone. What's left to compete on is the product experience and the brand, and both are set in the first year. YC has asked for more design founders for the same reason.
Early-stage teams building a software product, usually before or around their first funding round, who know design will make or break it.
It's agreed per startup, based on stage and the salary you can pay. We'd rather take a fair share of something great than a big share of something rushed.
You keep the design system and the culture. Many teams hire their design founder on; some bring in their own team. Either way the work is yours.
They work full-time inside your team, with the commitment of a co-founder, while staying connected to Made for Interaction's studio.
We read every application ourselves.