Designer Fund

What is Designer Fund?

Designer Fund is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California, specializing in seed and early-stage investments.

Founded in 2012, they target startups that are co-founded by designers and also engage in educating through their professional development program, Bridge.

Bridge aims to connect designers with startups and foster community growth within San Francisco. They are also known for organizing educational events like the Designer Fair and Women in Design, and for developing resources including the Designer Founders book and an infographic, which are distributed for the benefit of the public and design students globally.

Designer Fund invests in a diverse range of industries, including Software, IT, Hospitality, Media, Education, BioTech, FinTech, Energy, CleanTech, HealthTech, Material Science, Medical Devices, Healthcare, Consumer products, and more. With an investment focus ranging from $100,000 to $1,000,000 and a sweet spot of around $500,000, Designer Fund supports early-stage ventures from Pre-seed to Series A.

They manage assets amounting to $23,500,000. Their portfolio includes companies that leverage design to improve health, sustainability, and overall prosperity, such as Stripe, Gusto, Netlify, and Omada. They are dedicated to backing exceptional founders and empowering them with design to enact positive change in the world, as seen in the variety of companies they have invested in, covering various aspects of technology and innovation.

Designer Fund seems to place a significant emphasis on the transformative power of design in startups and its potential to solve complex challenges in multiple sectors.

What they say:

We invest in founders looking to improve the world with design.