How do we get more designers to become founders and start companies?

I joined Foundation Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence to tackle this question together with Steve Vassallo. Steve, a former IDEO’er turned VC, believed that technology was getting commoditized farther and farther up the stack, thanks to Moore’s Law. The opportunity for innovation was now at the interface level, right where techonology touched end users.

And yet, designers, the most user-oriented among founder types, were underrepresented among tech entrepreneurs. Why? What was holding them back?

We set out to find out. I turned my office in to a ‘war room’ (that’s what they call it when you use the walls to organize content), interviewed 50 designers founders, and synthesized what we learned into the five insights that make up the chapters of Steve’s book, The Way to Design.

I documented the journey in a companion book, cheekily titled The Way to The Way to Design. I share some of the pages here.