WHY aren't there more consumer Internet VCs w/ graphic design skills?

http://www.dshen.com/blogs/business/archives/why_arent_there_more_consumer_internet_vcs_w_graphic_design_skills.shtml

by cwan • 17 years ago

12 15 17 years ago

Interesting fact: Mike Moritz was a journalist for many years before Sequoia.

jbenz• 17 years ago

This article is really asking: Why haven't more designers become VCs and Angel Investors? He does a pretty nice job of answering this question.

I hire a lot of talented graphic design interns. We encourage them to think: "What skills can I learn to make myself more valuable?" The answer I always tell them is hacking. A suprisingly large amount of them don't know much about the hacker / startup world. They don't realize that being an awesome designer and an awesome developer could make them all-powerful.

This holds particularly true when thinking about this article's final point regarding "me-too products".

pclark• 17 years ago

BVP has a designer in residence.

ggruschow• 17 years ago

Did he miss intrinsic motivation? VC seems less related to what designers like to do and think about.

People often do tech work in order to build big things and make money, and VCs are right there in that game. Many engineers and programmers I've known speak of people who made a lot of money in the industry, and sometimes reference how they did things.

I don't recall that mindset in designers. They've far more often been pointing at some (anonymous) beautiful work or speaking about how great somebody's body of work is.. but personal profit isn't amongst the qualities mentioned. Market success is pretty rare too, and usually more related to the "clients don't know what they need, have no taste, are creatively barren, and have to be worked on/around" theme.

From my experience, I'd expect designers to be far more likely to end in groups supporting the arts rather than groups investing in tech.

madh• 17 years ago

Design firms also operate with a similar mindset. While they can (and do) make money, they are driven more by the work they do.

dshen• 17 years ago

First, thanks to all who responded to my blog post!

As far as intrinsic motivation goes, I did think about this, but in the end I declined to comment on generalizing about the motivations of a group of people. I chose to stay with non-motivational factors in my discussion because those could be analyzed more objectively. I did not feel right saying that one group of individuals thinks this way more than any other group, and certainly without a serious survey to really see what people want to do.

I do believe, like many other disciplines, that designers haven't been exposed to, or even given the opportunity to enter the investor business until recent years. Now that the discipline has been exposed to a new potential career path, I think we'll see that perhaps peoples' motivations could change simply because they have the exposure to a new possibility.

pieratt3• 17 years ago

As a graphic designer, I hope to be an exception to this observation. Just give me a few years.

On a less personal note, it's pretty rare that you will find a designer who is also interested in tech startups or business in general. As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time reading industry blogs and such, you simply don't see that much cross over between the two. Which is surprising considering how business-minded a good designer has to be, both in the way they understand and interpret their client's problems, and in the inevitable challenges that come with running your own shop.

fortes2• 17 years ago

Any industry blogs you'd recommend? I've got my share of tech blogs, but would love find some new hidden gems for design (especially interaction design).

pieratt3• 17 years ago

For Interaction Design? I don't have much for you. Here's a couple that are somewhat in that vein:

http://uxmag.com/ http://www.minimalsites.com http://www.creativeapplications.net http://www.formfiftyfive.com

oneplusone• 17 years ago

The biggest problem with current design schools is that they completely focus on print design. When I was studying for my bachelor in design there weren't any interactive design course until the 4th year.

It was also the only web design course that year.

And it focused entirely on Flash.

Is it really such a big surprise that when designers graduate most of them go into print? The ones that do go into web design has this Flash baggage they need to overcome and forget. For proof of this just take a look at print designer's portfolios, they are mostly made in Flash and have terrible UX.

pieratt3• 17 years ago

A part of the issue here is that most design schools require a Masters degree from their teaching staff, which flies in the face of working with talent in new media fields.

I spoke with the Chair of the design department at a decent school about this recently, and they basically had no intention of changing their policies on this.

tptacek• 17 years ago

Why isn't the answer to this question simply the bill rate of graphic designers? A standard web design project runs 10k-20k. A standard dev project runs 20k-100k. Also: the Internet is lousy with designers. Scarcity isn't the reason.

chaostheory• 17 years ago

edit: (forgot to elaborate on which question I was referring to) "There just aren't that many designers out there, relative to other disciplines. Anybody who has tried to hire designers knows that it is super hard, harder than hiring engineers which is already hard."

I think the real question is: why aren't more graphic designers transitioning from print into web design instead?

IMO There are plenty of graphic designers for market demand, but there are very few qualified web designers

omouse• 17 years ago

Because web design sucks. Dealing with HTML and CSS directly is like dealing with assembly language. With print design you know exactly what you have to work with. With web design, you're designing for a multitude of browsers and clients.

WHY aren't there more consumer Internet VCs w/ graphic design skills?

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