Ben Blumenrose (Designer Fund): When Design Is the Operating System, Not the Paint Job

24:19Ben Blumenrose:that I could be as good at this job as these other folks, but that like the system didn't want me to do that, right? It's like, you're an artist, you're a creative, you have no business with like, with money. And by the way, when we raised our first fund, there were literally people like we would go in and they were like, wait, did you go to business school? No. Did you work at a big fund? No. And it's like one guy literally said, why would I give you a dollar? let alone like hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars like i i don't get it and and and the response is like we know what good product is we know what it takes to build big fucking companies um and we have skill and knowledge that almost every great founder wants right now and cannot get that's why you give us money they just you know 19 out of 20 people who invest in funds were like, yeah, no, I don't buy that at all.

25:18Ben Blumenrose:That's not enough. You need to kind of know how to manage a fund, know how to deal with capital and all that stuff. And, you know, I was, even as a kid, I was, I was super into money. You know, we were, we were immigrants. We didn't have that much. I remember using like Quicken with my parents as a 10 year old to make sure like our finances. I was really good at math too. And so like, I understood like the power of money, understood the power of not having it. I was always interested in what was valuable and what you could charge for. By the way, we talked a little bit about early days in design.

25:51Ben Blumenrose:The first paid job I had, I would go on these BBSs and do mods for games, just like little side projects, just like fun little things I did. So I would use this thing called ResEdit to modify games. And one of the games was this Asteroids shooter game. And I would make all these weird 3D elements for whatever. Anyhow, so some guy contacts me and says, Hey, I work at an ad agency and we don't have much of a budget, but we'd love you to do this for one of our clients. And the client was Zima. If you remember the non-alcoholic, like clear drink. And so he wanted it. So the big asteroid would be a six pack and then you'd shoot it.

26:31Ben Blumenrose:It would be a bottle. You'd shoot it again. It would be the bottle cap. And then you remember that game asteroids. And so he goes, yeah, we don't have much of a budget. Yeah. And I said, well, what's what kind of budget do you have? And he goes, I think we could pay like$5 ,000. I was a 13 year old, you know, and back then$5 ,000, I mean,$5 ,000. It was like, you were offering me a million dollars. It was a huge sum of money. And so even like my earliest, earliest experience with design and kind of the value of design and like, it was just something that I was always like very curious about. And I just thought, you know when i was doing when i was looking into running a fund and what it would take and all that stuff i was like i can do this like just as well if not better than these folks and 19 out of 20 founders would want to work with us over any of these guys because we actually built we know how to build this stuff you know and design is such a superpower early on so it's just really frustrating how many people like said no but also again it comes back to like always feeling like um i want to be doing stuff that I'm scared of that feels like I have no business doing it where I feel a little bit like an outsider I will say you know it's been 10 years as an investor I still don't like fully feel like I definitely feel like I'm a designer first investor second even though like now it's very clear like I know go ahead that's what I was gonna say that's really good to hear

27:57Andy Budd:one thing I was gonna say is I think you know the first kind of generation of the first few generations of VCs naturally came from finance. They came from law because there's a lot of legal stuff involved in investing and there's a lot of kind of financial due diligence. But that for me has always felt like table stakes, that you've got to have it, but that's not a USP. And I think you're absolutely right. I think the modern founder assumes that you've got that and they want operators that, you know, they're drawn to people who have gone, you know, they've done this before, who are connected, who can kind of offer advice in the trenches.

28:29Andy Budd:You know, I think often think that like a lot of traditional VC funds, it feels like you're having a meeting with your dad or your uncle. It's all incredibly formal. Whereas I love the relationships that I have with my founders because they see me as just one of them. They don't see this kind of like status difference. They just say like, here's somebody that I can chat to, who's been around the block, who can really help me guide me on the difficult part of running a business. And that isn't necessarily like how to do your taxes although that is a pain in the ass and how to kind of like put your legal stuff together but it's it's go to market it's it's finding product market fit it's you know finding and sourcing talent and this is all stuff that we've done and a lot of vcs haven't done in a meaningful way so i'm kind of totally with you there um it sounds like you were raising at a time when design wasn't necessarily as valued and so it sounds like the fundraising and a little bit challenging.

29:25Andy Budd:But obviously you found people to back you and you were able to start the designer fund. And so here we are now, like you've got a whole bunch of money, you're investing, you've managed to draw in a whole bunch of like really big names, like you've invested in some amazing companies. What is it about your unique focus that is drawing those founders to you rather than insert any other of a 500 VCs in the valley, do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of things.

29:56Ben Blumenrose:One is we're very collaborative by design. So one of the things that you have as an advantage if you're small is that you can be very collaborative, meaning like if someone's raising a couple million dollars or, you know, whatever, let's say two to three million bucks and you want to put in 500K, it means that they can choose a lead and the leads have to compete against one another because they need to put in like a million and a half or two million and then and then you as a value-add investor you can just say hey look I I provide all this value for a much smaller check size and it becomes a little bit of a no-brainer and most of the leads by the way don't have this as an expertise and so when they're starting to think about how do I create a well-rounded a high-value group of investors around the table at this company product design brand design becomes this thing that's like if there's someone that can come with a smaller check size and bring this it becomes just like yes like how how can you know i've had investors say how do we get you to do like all the the deals that we do you know so i think that's really one of the secrets is like we've stayed relatively small in terms of just silicon valley fund sizes which allows us to be very collaborative by design so that's super helpful i was just gonna say i'm curious because

31:16Andy Budd:I totally agree. I think you have a couple of funds with large coffers that can do the big kind of lead rounds. And you come in as a kind of a smaller check that is value add. And you're an operator and you bring the knowledge of design and product. I'm just wondering, like, why hasn't this seemingly taken on? Why aren't there dozens and dozens of design led or product led or marketing led funds? I mean, there are a few, but it feels like there should be more. I mean, I'm not trying to encourage more because I think you've got a brilliant market sewn up there. But I'm just kind of wondering, hasn't your success kind of blown things up more?

31:49Ben Blumenrose:I will tell you exactly why. It's a totally different job than doing product design or building products. It just is. It's saying no 99 times out of 100. It is managing LPE relationships and making sure that you're, you know, getting out of positions as well as coming in. It's having very difficult conversations with founders when needed. you know as a designer it's like your whole thing is is you're a dreamer you're a manifester of dreams right someone comes to you and they say I want to build x and you say I will help you make x I can do that for you and and as a designer good designers will do that 99 times out of 100 they say yes yes and 99 times out of 100 and the investor is the exact opposite right and you need have a critical eye of like why something won't work and so it's just that you know like the more I get into it the more I realize it's not quite this way but it's almost like I went into medicine and I was like oh see designers can become doctors so come on everyone come come from design to medicine and it's like what are you talking about they have nothing to do with each other and there is a little bit of that here where it's just like it is and it is more adjacent but it is quite a different role.

33:07Ben Blumenrose:And so I do think like when designers start realizing like to be a formal VC of a fund, it's just a very different role. And we've had folks who've, you know, they've come to be VCs and have said, well, no, this kind of sucks. And they basically, you know, what I think is probably a better fit for most designers is to angel, you know, keep your design or product or founder role and have that be 80 % of what you do. And on the side, angel invest. You know, Dylan of Figma does this. Bobby Goodlat does this. Oleo does this, right? So I think it's like, it makes so much sense that that's just a better fit for most designers because it lets you do the thing that you love day in, day out and still be able to contribute to the ecosystem by being an investor that way.

34:02Ben Blumenrose:and you're not beholden to a bunch of LPs and you don't have to communicate about all this stuff and you don't have these like weird arbitrary timelines and all this stuff. It's like you're fully in control. So I think that's probably why you see way more designer angel investors than like designers who've become full-on, you know, managers of funds.

34:23Andy Budd:And I think that's really good advice. I actually think a lot of designers would jump to me and say, hey, Andy, how do I get involved in VC or investing or advising? And one of the best ways to do it is to start by being an angel investor, writing small little checks for your friends, for people in your network, people you've worked with. That kind of gives you an ability to kind of have that connection, offer that advice. And I think a lot of people are surprised. I think when people think of investors, they think you must be writing 100K, 500K checks. But like I've made a lot of sort of like small check angel investors that are writing a couple of K here, a couple of K there.

34:57Andy Budd:and actually in the UK there were some really great tax benefits for for doing that as well so I think start by exploring angel investing and see where you get on one thing I was going to say because so much stuff to talk about here but you you said you know you made the kind of like joke around hey look medicine isn't the same as design I bet you there are some LinkedIn articles that say hey well medicine is just user research and problem solving that's basically design thinking like why can't I become a doctor so I'm sure there's a bunch of people out there that would think that the leap is not as big or crazy as you might make it out to be but I'm kind of with you there um but I'm kind of curious like obviously I guess a lot of designers come to you for funding but a lot of people that aren't designers come to you with funding so I'm kind of curious like the non-designers the the technical co-founders the business co-founders what do they often get wrong about design and how do you help them?

35:50Ben Blumenrose:Yeah, I think actually that archetype comes to us more because if you're a designer founder, you're kind of like, well, I know design. I don't need a designer investor. I need someone who has skills and knowledge that I don't have. Our argument to designer founders is like, look, you want like-minded investors because when shit hits the fan, which it always does at startups, you don't want someone who doesn't share your values around products in design because basically when things go south they're going to start pushing you and pulling you in ways that you're going to realize are not aligned with how you want to work and then the other thing is just that we know all the mistakes that designer founders make and so we can help people just like see around corners uh way better than than people who don't work uh with so many designer founders but i will say so the the non-designer founders though really want to work with us why because design is this thing that they value and they know is important but they have no clue how to do it well and I think the thing that most non-designer founders get wrong with design they see design as like they see it as maybe product design they see it as like a little bit of brand and and that's kind of it they don't understand how design can just be this like superpower that you can apply across an entire company to do everything better, right?

37:13Ben Blumenrose:You can apply design to hiring and recruiting. You can apply design to building culture. You can apply design to your physical space and make it an incredible place to work. You know, there's this great story about Gusto. When they moved into their office south of downtown San Francisco, it's like an old engine factory. And they did this incredible job with it. They were really thoughtful about all the all the ways that like things flowed and and how to infuse it with their own culture and one of the things they noticed is the rate of acceptance after interviews went way up in the new office and they're just like what's going on here and it turns out when they talk to people they're just like yeah i walk into this place and it's just like i want to work here before they even like have an interview it's just like you walk in and you just say like Like, this is where magical things happen.

38:03Ben Blumenrose:This is where great people do great work. You know, before you even had your first interview, that was people's impression. So I think that's the thing that technical people get wrong. Like, I think they know the power of design and product design and software. They get it with, like, brand a little bit. But they really don't internalize just how powerful it can be across the board in all the things that they do to be this, like, force multiplier for every aspect of the company.

38:30Andy Budd:I find very similar stuff in my work with founders as well. I think a lot of people, and maybe it's a societal thing, kind of often position design as an embellishment. It's like, well, we start with the thing that we've created and then we bring the designers in to make it look good. And I actually think design is about shaping the thing, not embellishing, and actually getting design involved early to help, as we talked about earlier, to try and get those ideas out of your head and in a visual way rather than a written way. But actually, at the same time, I'm finding there are more and more tools out there that allow founders who are non-design and non-design engineering teams to put quite high quality work out into the world through design systems and kind of UI kits and whatever.

39:14Andy Budd:And so it used to be the case that I would always say to founders, you should have a designer really in the early days. and now I'm kind of less sure I'm kind of curious I'm curious whether all the scaffolding has made it um easier for non-design founders to get further without that designer sort of sidekick

39:31Ben Blumenrose:or co-pilot so I think in some ways yes so I think it's it's easier to get good design done if you know what you are building right in terms of just like pretty good product design but to do really exceptional work to figure out even what you should be building to create a product that people are just going to be like oh yeah i will definitely use this over the eight other versions of this that takes great product design not good product design so i think you're right if someone's okay getting by with good enough they can they can get by with good enough but if your goal is to create something that stands out and that is best in class you need a designer early on.

40:16Ben Blumenrose:And so I like these, these tools are always better in the hands of the practitioners, right? Even these like new design tools in the hands of a highly skilled designer, they're going to get better output and outcomes than someone who doesn't know how to design.

40:31Andy Budd:I mean, I think engineering teams with a, with a really visionary founder are able to get sort of relatively polished products out the door really quickly without the use of a designer. And so you see a lot of products kind of emerging into the market and it's enough of a minimum viable product or beta or enough of a surface area they can start selling they can start driving traffic to but i often find that they suddenly you know are six months like things aren't catching fire things aren't taking off and they don't quite understand why and often it's a point where they bring the designers in that help them get in the minds of their users go back to first principles understand what the beginner's mind is like because often these people are designing products for super users not kind of like harass stress people trying to get through the onboarding process and i find that having a couple of really good designers is the point where they start finding product market fit that they get closer and closer and closer so i've always thought designers are they're maybe not people that that you can't find product market fit without but i think a good design team can help you get there a lot faster and if you get that lost faster you burn a lot less capital, you're more capital efficient, you go into your raises with much more momentum, with much more kind of proof points.

41:46Andy Budd:And so I do think designers can be a real multiplier in a way that a lot of people don't understand. So it sounds like we're on a similar wavelength there. You do have, though, obviously, as you mentioned, some designers coming to you for funding. You've said that there are common mistakes that they make. So what are those common mistakes? What are the patterns that you see design founders kind of repeating ad infinitum? And what would

42:08Ben Blumenrose:you like to change about that yeah i think uh there's a couple things because i think there's there's kind of the classic archetype of a designer you know it's like you wake up you walk the dog you go grab your coffee you go journal for an hour you know you then uh meet some friends then you sketch a little bit you know uh it's that that and you You know, this is a little bit of a caricature, but it's not like I think for many designers, that is their idealized day. You know, it's not an all hands with a thousand people putting out fires from the legal team in Germany, then dealing with HR issues.

42:55Ben Blumenrose:Then, do you know what I mean? Like that's not the life that designers aspire to. So I think one thing is almost like one of the big mistakes for designer founders is kind of like shifting their mental model of what it is to be a founder with the skill set of design. And so that's something that we talk to designer founders a lot about is like, how do you as a designer use your skill set and your superpower of design and do the things in the company where design is going to elevate those areas? And then for the other areas, how do you maybe offload those to someone else or not put so much of your time and energy into those things?

43:40Ben Blumenrose:So I think one mistake is designers are just like, they're like, okay, well, founders, like they just take everything on and I'll just take everything on. And then they quickly become just like miserable because they're bogged down and all these other things where they could have actually like partnered with co-founders to take over different parts of the company or experts or whatever. So I think a lot of the founders that I've seen really succeed, they've delegated really well to experts and other folks the things that they don't want to get really good at or that they don't want to lean. They don't want to use their design superpower to excel at.

44:13Ben Blumenrose:That's one thing. The other thing is like preciousness because they feel like, well, I'm a designer and the things I put out into the world, they're going to be looked at with a magnifying glass. so they're just so precious with putting stuff out that's imperfect instead of just like prototype and put it out prototype and put it out just like having that relentless iterative energy and being okay with like the things i put out um i might get people shitting on it i might get friends being like well this doesn't look like a designer made it and that's just be at peace with that um and in fact and if you don't do that you're just you're gonna fail so i i think that's another big piece is like um designer founders tend to be just too precious with that piece and i and then the the last thing i would say is like they don't understand just the the power of uh the things outside the product meaning distribution and marketing and some of these other things where you really see so like you were you brought up framer the last couple years of framers existence i think have been like this true marketing master class they've done such an incredible job of building energy and um you know you call it hype or whatever you want to call it around feature releases they've done this incredible job of like um building up their community and like not just like building a community but actually like celebrating those people and they use design as their superpower to celebrate the people that are doing well on framer and it's just this muscle it took them like seven years to to kind of lean into this thing and and now it's just like they have this like machine and this engine and so much energy uh and good comes to the company because of it you know so it's like they could have had the same product but if they didn't have this this marketing machine around feature release and it's just like you're putting the stuff out into you know into the forest and no one's there to hear it right so like the best products don't always win and designers need to understand there's all this other stuff around building best-in-class products now um that is required of them to succeed right so you can't just be that precious designer and be like look here it is and expect everyone to just come it just doesn't doesn't happen that way that's maybe the the third big mistake that designers make is not understanding all the other stuff around building great product that needs to happen at a high level for a product to succeed yeah i mean look those are the trends

46:50Andy Budd:i see as well i mean i frame it slightly differently but i think we're bang on in terms of what we're actually seeing like i see a lot of designers getting fed up of working with large companies because they can't do the perfect design process they can't do the the research double diamond kind of thing and often they think hey if I'm running my own thing I can run the process however I want but actually in in a startup world where you've got limited capital limited time you're often running a more impoverished process you know you are talking to customers but it's not this kind of perfect academic process and actually you're being forced more to throw things out in the world as you say that are kind of a little bit half-assed a little bit rough around the edges and for a lot of designers that becomes a bit of almost like a bit of professional embarrassment around kind of like, I can't put this thing out because it's not ready yet.

47:36Andy Budd:But as we know, like, you know, you don't want to be perfecting a thing that's wrong. And so getting stuff out in the open quickly, I think is really important. So I think that takes some training to retrain themselves around the speed and tempo that's needed. I think the other thing you're absolutely right. I think a lot of designers think that if I start my business, I'm going to spend all my time doing the stuff I love, which is obsessing over products, assessing over user needs, assessing over kind of building a brilliant interface. And actually, the thing you'll get at is often the thing that you need to step away from, because you've built an organization around you that's good at that.

48:07Andy Budd:As a founder, you need to lean into sales, you need to lean into marketing. But the weird thing is, I actually think that designers can be really good at that. You know, for me, I think sales is often an extension of the discovery process. I think marketing is often, you know, understanding what customers love, and trying to frame your products in a way that kind of really hits home. I think, you know, a lot of, you talked earlier about kind of how design isn't just about shipping interfaces, it's about using that design thinking approach to solve other kind of business problems. And I think the best design founders that I've met, they actually don't obsess over the interface anywhere near as much as like they obsess over figuring out their GTM, figuring out their marketing, figuring out their sales and perfecting it.

48:49Andy Budd:And so, yeah, I'm totally with you there um i mean we're seeing a bit of a resurgence in the last you know six months or a year of like design founders you're doing a lot in that space as well you've got an amazing program around surfacing some of the um the stories around design founders i think it's really easy to go hey we've got apple and we've got airbnb and not much else and i think you've been spending a load of time saying hey look there's all these amazing stories out there i know yc are pushing for more designers to become founders if you were speaking to a young designer now thinking about like you know whether it's a the right path for them like what advice would you give them

49:29Ben Blumenrose:yeah the thing i've started to realize is too many people basically they say okay i want to be a founder and so how do i raise money you know and it's like uh dude you're not there so so there's there's kind of these three steps that i'm realizing that i'm talking to a lot of a lot of designers who are kind of like interested in becoming founders i'm like step one is like build the thing it's so much easier to build the thing these days and when i see someone raising money and they're like oh no we don't have any prototypes or anything built it's just like why not like you can build it in a day now the thing that used to take you a year so it's just like really suspect when someone doesn't even have a prototype let alone like you can actually build real live software just like much easier and for much less money so step one is like build the thing first okay and then um and then the question is like does this thing deserve to be a company at all right does it actually deserve people around it and your full 100 day in day out attention because you might realize like once you build the thing is actually much better as a thing that you spend two to five hours a week on as a little as a little side thing and you can maintain it and it's and it's cool and it's interesting but it doesn't have to be your whole thing you know um so step one build the thing step two is like does this need to be a company okay so then let's say you've built the thing you're like oh this is pretty interesting and then all of a sudden it's like people are using it and you're like oh i can kind of see how a company could be yeah yeah no this deserves to be a company great so now now we we decided it deserves to be a company then this the next step is like let's decide what company what type of company this needs to be because there are many different paths to building a company and there are so many examples now people who've built like so imagine you're a designer and you build something that people use and pay for right and let's say um this thing gets to a place where the where five ten million bucks a year is you know of revenue is coming in the door and you have you know 12 15 people who are building this thing and supporting the thing uh costing a few million bucks and the thing makes three to four million bucks in profit every year that you and your co-founder take home right four million dollars of profit split between the founders two million each year after year that's an incredible thing to build and an absolute failure for a venture-backed company right yeah and so you know it's like that that's the thing that people really need to internalize there's like a a path that you're signing up for when you raise vc money of the type of company you want to build so before you're like i want to raise money for this let's first think about like can you just build it the way old school companies used to be built which is like we build a thing we charge for it and we spend less money than we make and you do that for a number of years and all of a sudden now you have this like amazing small company.

52:31Ben Blumenrose:And by the way, yeah, I just think a lot of people would be very happy to have those kinds of businesses. So now we've built the thing, we realize it needs to be a company. And then you come to a point where you say, look, this doesn't deserve just to be any kind of company. This needs to be a venture-backed company because I think to truly manifest this thing to be the dream that I want it to be, I need thousands of people, we're going to need hundreds of millions of dollars to really have the kind of impact that this thing deserves. That's the kind of company this needs to be. Then you go and you raise venture capital money, right?

53:07Ben Blumenrose:So there's just like steps to getting there. And too many people start with like, I kind of have an idea, let me go raise 5 million bucks. And you're basically going about it completely wrong. So that's what I would tell aspiring designer founders is like, start building the thing, start finding the people who you'd want to build the thing with and then figure out like side project or no company or no venture backable or no and then if it's venture backable come come send us an email absolutely absolutely i mean if

53:37Andy Budd:if any um prospective founders whether they're designers or not but have a passion for design listen to this i would highly recommend them to kind of reach out to you um interestingly while you were talking about that like i actually run a little a design founder summer camp over the past summer and a lot of the um a lot of the things you were saying were kind of replicated in the conversations we were having as well you know is this a venture back or a business what's the size and scale like have you built the the prototype yet you know like a lot of people you're absolutely right they start thinking about vc money before they've done any of the other stuff and kind of helping them through that process was was really fun so i i saw a lot of what you were saying in the cohort that i took through this program earlier in the summer what did you what did you

54:20Ben Blumenrose:call it summer camp i want to come to a designer founder summer camp it was great it was it was a

54:25Andy Budd:it was a six week six evening thing over the summer in in in august just called the design founder summer camp i'll i'll i'll ping you the details maybe even get you come and be a be a special guest for the next one i run um but yeah very much kind of you know talking about all the kind of stuff we've been talking about today so um absolutely look i know you've got to go i just want to kind of finish up now really quickly um i'd love to kind of understand you know lots of things are happening in the world of AI at the moment, both in terms of, you know, amazing companies you're investing in, you know, AI shaping the tools and the practices that designers are kind of exploring.

55:00Andy Budd:I'm just kind of wondering what you're seeing at the moment, and what are the kind of the opportunities that designers and design sort of conscious founders should be tackling? And what are the risks out there that people need to be aware of?

55:12Ben Blumenrose:Yeah, I mean, I think the thing about this era of investing, it's probably one of the hardest since I've been doing this for the last 10 years, because the perceived value when you first look at an AI-enabled product, and if you just look at it at the 10 ,000-foot view or the 15 ,000-foot view, almost every product seems incredible. You look at this thing and you're just like, oh my God, this thing is doing in minutes and hours what used to take people months and years. it feels like magic right and so on the surface it's very easy to see things and just be like i gotta invest in this thing this is i've never seen anything like it we gotta invest um but the the the diligence the the you know the craft of investing means you actually you gotta go a level down and really understand like does this thing actually do what it says it'll do and is it good enough at the work to go to 100%, right?

56:17Ben Blumenrose:And deliver on, is it actually like, you know, are people actually going to like rely on this thing and do their work in this thing? Or is it more of a, oh, this gets good enough, but all of a sudden when you realize the last 10, 20%, it's not quite enough. So I'll give you like an example. We looked at a company that was helping outbound calls for doctor's offices. So a lot of times nurses are put into these positions where they have to like call a bunch of offices and make sure that the appointment, you know, it's like, hey, we have someone who needs a referral to, you know, a knee specialist.

56:52Ben Blumenrose:So they call all the like knee specialists, gather around the days and times that they're available, if they are covered by insurance, blah, blah, blah, and gather all this data. And they do this dozens of times a day. And so this company says, well, that's done. Let's just like, we have the voice bots now, and we can put that into a database, and it's great. And so you just think like, oh, my God, this is going to save doctors' offices tons of time and money. And what office is not going to buy this? This seems amazing. But then I look at the call logs and all the data in there, and I think to myself, is this accurate?

57:30Ben Blumenrose:And how do we know? And so I asked them, is this accurate and how do you know? And they said, well, we have the transcripts. I'm like, well, who's going to go over the transcripts and validate whether the transcript matches the data? And who's going to make sure that these transcripts, I mean, you've seen these transcription tools, they get it mostly right. But if they get one piece of data wrong and this is health care data, that's a big problem, right? So like health care data needs to be dialed. and doctors are not going to start looking through transcripts and making sure so like well it's like you know we'll figure that out and it's like well that yeah that's actually a really critical piece you know so when you're making an image using ai and the image looks like pretty good pretty good is not going to give someone the wrong medication or pretty good is not going to have someone show up in the wrong day for their knee replacement surgery right a pretty good image still is like pretty good you can use it in marketing collateral all that stuff so there's places in ai where pretty good or getting things to 90 is is totally fine and you can ship that thing and there's places where ai cannot we cannot have pretty good you know you can't show like i'll give you another example is like legal in ai right we we were looking at this tool where it looks at the documents of a of a round and it tells you like things that are wrong or off or whatever and it's like it's really good at catching like uh the errors you know like spelling errors or things that are really really off but then when it finds things that are a little bit more gray you know and it's like hey surface these things so now i have to go to the company and they have a real lawyer and i say hey my ai tool found these things and the lawyer is going to push back and say your ai tool is a dum-dum and here's why these things are in there and now i've brought like a wet noodle to a gunfight because they actually have a real lawyer who knows what they're doing, right?

59:28Ben Blumenrose:Not to mention, imagine in eight years, if something happens with this company, like they go public or they're sold and the thing is off. And then I say like, you know why it's off? Oh, our AI tool must have gotten it wrong. I tried to save a few hundred bucks on my legal fees by using this AI tool. Our lawyers, our LPs, they're like, you know, they'd lose their shit and rightfully so, Right. And so I think there's just areas where AI can create magic, can be a cherry on top, can create things that are shippable, that won't have huge repercussions if it's a little wrong. And those are the things that I'm very excited about.

1:00:06Ben Blumenrose:And then there's things where it's like they might seem on the surface to be magical. But once you dig in, you're like, it's not quite there. And the fact that it's not quite there is actually a big deal. And it's probably not not a thing that's going to work. So that's what makes it really hard right now.

1:00:22Andy Budd:95 % there for marking the tool is probably good enough. 95 % there for landing a plane, probably not.

1:00:29Ben Blumenrose:Right, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry, we got it wrong. We thought the runway was just 50 yards that way. Yeah, no, that's not good enough.

1:00:38Andy Budd:The model I use at the moment is kind of like, I think AI is like an intern. They can go off and do a whole bunch of kind of brute force work, but you need someone to kind of like oversee and kind of check the work. and actually sometimes the check-in of the work can be more tiresome and labor intensive and so you know there are certain environments where it works well and it's certain environments where it doesn't that might change and as accuracy increases i think we'll see different stuff but i think at the moment i think you're absolutely right um you know the other thing i have a friend and yeah i

1:01:09Ben Blumenrose:have a friend who's a who used to fly the u2 dragon lady it was like the spy plane for america flies at like more than 70 000 feet flies in the spacesuit um and it's basically uh you know it's like they take photos of all over all you know all over the world but they're they're they're uh like on their little patches their motto is in god we trust all others we monitor and i think like for for ai it's like in god we trust all others we validate you have to like you know it's like you can't take ai at face value you have to kind of like it's an it's a data input and you sort of have to just validate the things that it gives you to make sure it's it's correct right that's that's still where we're at right now yeah i think one of the other big challenges

1:02:00Andy Budd:um with ai is also just the the cost base of the unique economics i see a lot of people who are building these really really great tools i think when they realize the token costs and they realize actually you know people don't want to be paying five dollars or ten dollars for a customer service call kind of resolution or you know um you know so so that's the other thing as well i've seen a lot of companies have got a really good product but they just can't make the economics work they can't find people willing to pay enough money to cover all of the costs and that might come down so again that might be a problem that solves itself in three or four years time but at the moment sometimes it's actually cheaper to use a human being than it is to use an expensive model So, but look, this has been great.

1:02:43Andy Budd:Like this has been an amazing chat. I've got to let you go. Just lastly, like what's next for the Designer Fund and how can people connect with you? If they want to learn more, if they want to kind of, you know, find out what you're doing, if they want to pitch to you, like where can people come to find that information?

1:03:02Ben Blumenrose:Yeah, so, I mean, we are on all the platforms. So we have a website, designerfund.com. We have a sub stack now that's designerfounders.com or you can look at a lot of the designer founder stuff we put out. We're on X and Instagram and all those things. So it's not hard to find us. So if you want to see what we're working on, want to see the content we're putting out, we're very, very vocal about it because we want to influence the ecosystem to understand the value of this stuff. What's next for us is really just like making sure that designers are part of this new wave of great companies because again, it's like I'm having flashbacks to Facebook days where it's like intentions are not good enough.

1:03:43Ben Blumenrose:And designers are so good at being the voice and advocate for people and society and humanity. And if these tools don't have that infused in them, we're going to fuck it up once again. You know, like social networks, like, I don't know, you know, it's playing out not great. Right. And so we need to like learn from our mistakes. We need to learn from history and designers can be a big part of that. And we want to make sure that that happens. So that's kind of what we're the drumbeat that we're trying to bang on. And we have money to invest in the right people building the right stuff. So that's that we're going to continue to do that until we feel like everyone's on the right path once again.

1:04:27Andy Budd:Well, I love it. Look, it's been fascinating chatting to you. Thank you so much for joining me. And I look forward to kind of catching you again down the road. So, yeah, take it easy and speak to you soon.

1:04:37Ben Blumenrose:Awesome. Thanks, Andy, for the time. I really appreciate it.