Do startups need to care about design? At the early stages, founders may want to focus on the product rather than worrying about how it looks, making design a “nice-to-have” for founders to add once they’ve proved to investors that they have a product that works.
But Vanessa Cho, design partner at GV, Alphabet’s venture capital division, argues that’s the wrong way for founders to think about design.
Speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Design conference in Macau on Dec. 5, Cho argued founders need to take “design with a capital D” seriously, even if they leave questions like visual branding and user experience to a later conversation.
In fact, thinking about design questions early can help startups win funding. Design helps foster a “good foundation,” which in turn gives investors the confidence they need to believe founders are developing products with their customer in mind, and that “they know how to actually build a scalable product.”
Cho used a homebuilding analogy to explain design’s importance. Design questions like branding and user experience are similar to choosing the furniture mid-construction, she said. But “design with a capital D” is akin to asking fundamental questions before starting construction—like how big the house needs to be, and how many rooms it needs to have.
“Design is critical for a successful company,” she said.
What is Google Ventures?
GV, launched as Google Ventures in 2009, is backed by Alphabet, Google’s parent company. It currently has over $10 billion in assets under management with 400 companies in its portfolio across North America and Europe. Some of GV’s most notable investment successes are Uber, Nest and Slack.
Cho joined GV in 2018, and now leads its design team. Cho previously acted as Google Workspace’s head of user experience, working on services like Gmail, Google Drive and Google Meet.
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At Brainstorm Design, Cho credited her unique background for her career. Cho, the daughter of a United Nations diplomat, grew up in Vienna.
“I was surrounded by music, art, and culture. But if you meet someone from Vienna, there’s an appreciation for efficiency, timeliness and optimization,” Cho said. “I’m a perfect blend of Viennese where I have a deep appreciation of aesthetics, but I’m also very pragmatic.”
But Vienna, unsurprisingly, did not have a lot of Asians, let alone Koreans. “At a very early age, I learned to live in a world that was not designed for me,” she said.
“I find it’s one of my superpowers,” she continued. “I never assume an experience is designed for me.”
Cho says she brings that lack of bias with her to her conversations with startups. “I can ask very provocative and, at times, probably also obnoxious questions that the team probably cannot ask. ‘What would happen if we had to deliver the roadmap in half the time? What would we cut?’” she suggests.
“Those are the questions I can ask without any reputational risk.”
