Bringing on a full-time designer isn’t the first priority for startups, but more brands are appreciating the value of investing in design early on
Frank Guzzone has had an interesting career so far. An entirely self-taught designer, he originally studied pre-med before switching to art direction and then landing roles at Mother New York, Google Creative Lab and healthcare startup Oscar.
Appointed the first Head of Design at Thrive Capital in early 2024, Guzzone is responsible for embedding design into every part of the organisation – from its own branding, identity, events and internal product development, through to its portfolio of companies, which span Stripe, Warby Parker, OpenAI and Oscar Health.
We asked him what early stage companies need to know about putting budget towards branding, how it can be used as a tool for testing the market, and why creative success isn’t always about originality.
- Emma TuckerIs it fair to say that early stage companies, and VC firms, value design more than they did five, or maybe 10 years ago?
Frank GuzzoneI think they’re starting to recognise the impact of design, and how much earlier you should start considering that in the lifecycle of a company. The speed at which companies have to build, and the focus they often have on the engineering and technical side, means design isn’t usually the first thing considered, especially when it comes to early hiring.
But in the last ten years it’s become a lot easier to start brands – although maybe not to build successful companies – and get a website up or build a product. Barriers to entry have come down, which has led to a more saturated market in a lot of industries. And I think one way to differentiate yourself is through design, whether that’s brand or product design. I’ve seen a lot of early stage teams thinking about design much earlier.
I can’t say that they consider a designer as one of the first four hires, but that is shifting. Companies are bringing on contractors or working with a brand studio or product design studio, and it’s switching over to being more of a priority. I think most VC firms 10 years ago didn’t have design as a function, but supporting our portfolio through design is something that we now offer.
- ETThere are inevitably people that will say, well, why does it matter what it looks like? If it’s good enough, they’ll love it however it’s delivered.
FGI think there’s truth to that. Something I always tell founders is that even if you make a foundational product look nice, if the functionality isn’t there you might get spikes in people trying it but not sticking around. So you need a foundation there, and then you leverage design to make a more optimal user experience, or a brand that people want to associate themselves with.
Consumers have a stronger appetite now for better designed products, and that’s again because of the saturation in the market, as well as the many new tools that have made it easier for people to design and build products. They expect the Airbnb for this or the Uber for that, and while that speaks to the product’s functionality it also speaks to the user experience.
- ETIs there a sense that good branding means people will stay on the ups and downs of a journey with you, as you launch new features or change things?
FGAbsolutely, I think that’s true. Trust comes from the product working, but also the experience you get interacting with that brand. If you think about Apple, it’s an obvious one, but they’ve put so much care in their packaging, as well as their devices and software. They could have easily done something more basic and off-the-shelf, but they’ve owned their entire unboxing experience. Another great example is The Browser Company, which is the team behind the browser Arc. Everything from how they share their company values on their website to how they announce new product features with their community is so well designed/executed and feels unique to their brand. That’s how you think about design as more than just making things look nice – it’s a strategic tool.
“That’s how you think about design as more than just making things look nice – it’s a strategic tool.”
Frank Guzzone – Head of Design, Thrive Capital
- ETI know you really believe in design being used as a strategic tool; can you explain a bit more about how Thrive is using it that way?
FGWe might be working with a potential founder who’s excited about an industry or an area, but wants to do a bit more research into it – so it’s a white space from the business model, or market or product perspective. We can do research and interviews, but this is where design becomes a strategic tool. We can stand up a brand and do what we call a painted door test which is where we put a brand/website up that looks real, we run some ads that look real, and that allows us to put a brand out in the world and get a real signal from potential customers.
This is great, because strategically we’re not investing a lot, and we’re not going full-in, but we’re doing a pseudo start to get a sense of whether something will work. Design is important because if something doesn’t look or feel real, you won’t get that signal. Of course, this isn’t the only indicator we use of whether to move forward, but it’s one signal that allows us to be more confident in the idea, the industry and the market.
- ETYou already mentioned that a marketing or design person probably isn’t one of a company’s earliest hires, but at some point in their journey an early stage business is going to have to invest some budget in branding. How do you justify spending that money?
FGFor me it’s less a question of how much to invest, and more about when to invest. If a company establishes a brand early on, then it feels like there’s less friction as you start to build the business. A strong brand sends a signal to the market that you know who you are. That’s hard to do if it’s early, because you’re still figuring things out, but you might still have conviction around who you are at that moment – maybe you’re focusing your product or features, or targeting a specific audience. I think if you tell that story people will recognise that you’re focused, and that the product is being designed for a specific audience. That’s where brand can really help.
“If a company establishes a brand early on, then it feels like there’s less friction as you start to build the business. A strong brand sends a signal to the market that you know who you are.”
- ETIs it ever too early to put some budget behind design or brand?
FGI think even if you do a more low-cost investment at the beginning of your brand, early stage companies still need to think about having a viable brand that can set the foundation for what the business can evolve into. You can’t predict what will happen in five years but the goal is to have a foundation that can evolve as your product does. You might be at a point where you don’t want to invest in design materially, you want to learn more about the product as you go. However if you invest two or three years later, you ideally want to build off the brand equity you’ve already created, rather than completely scrapping what you’ve got. We’ve all seen case studies where people have changed the name and logo, and unless it's grounded in a reason that makes sense to the customers, it feels arbitrary.
- ETWith creative work, there’s often the temptation to do something that’s brilliant, but maybe almost too clever or too innovative. Does design sometimes need to be dialled down a touch to connect with real world users?
FGBeing original works when you have a reason to be original, but I think users expect some things – for example, how interactions happen on a website or in product UI. You can be bold and step out from this to get attention and customers, but you don’t want to be reinventing the wheel or doing something new for the sake of it.
There’s ways to differentiate your product and push the boundaries, but there’s a lot of value in looking at what’s worked, especially early on in your business. If you’re a new company, and it’s the first time someone’s interacting within your product, then you don’t want to run the risk of layering more on top of that and having them not understand. People have shorter attention spans, so it needs to stick quickly.
As one example, we were working on the UX for a finance product and finding some creative ways of doing interaction design. But we ultimately recognised we were taking it a bit too far; the fact that we’d already designed a better-than-usual experience, incorporated some new foundational features, and that things were a bit sleeker and cleaner than competitors, was enough. So we pulled back and decided to find ways to add unique moments as we started to get customers and understand what they liked.
- ETAnd my last question – so much of what AUFI does is about helping people build relationships with creative teams, and I wondered if you had advice on how to make the most of those agency partnerships?
FGHaving been on the client services side, I always try and get founders to prepare for those first chats and that intro call. I ask questions to get them in the mindset of describing their brand and showing examples of work they like, and having those kinds of conversations allows creative teams to get a sense of who the founders are, what they’re building, who the competitors are, what they’re excited and less excited about and what they want to get from an engagement. It sounds obvious, but doing the legwork to prepare for that conversation allows us to move more efficiently in the process. It means that once we kick off the actual work, we’ve already done some of the early strategy and studios have a much clearer understanding of what we’re thinking. We can get into a project much quicker, and an agency respects and is excited about the work.
