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Ben Blumenfeld

Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Designer Fund · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorfounderoperator@benblumenrose ↗designerfund.com ↗

He is the co-founder and managing partner of Designer Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in tech companies prioritizing design. Previously, he spent over five years as an early designer at Facebook, leading design teams for core products such as Facebook Platform and Timeline.

10statements → 5claims → 2claims resolved → 3.8/5average certainty → 2.4/5average debate potential → 4.5/5argument clarity · the sources → 4said about them ↓

1 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 4 assertions · 5 insights · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ben argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Designer Fund's Bridge program has a lower acceptance rate than Stanford
“We have about 90 designers that have gone through that program, 4500 designers have applied for it, so it kind of has a tougher acceptance, right, than Stanford or Harvard.”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 9:41 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.5 / 5 directness 4.9 · coherence 4.8 · precision 4.2 · compression 3.8

answered every one of 13 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

232 words/min while actually speaking · 7.4 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,186 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 3/10
pushed back at the host 2/10
setup questions received 65%

Everything Ben Blumenfeld said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Product-market fit is a continuous spectrum, not a binary state
“This idea of like product market fit as a thing that you either have or don't have, it's not really true. That's not really the way it works. You can get closer to product market fit and product market fit is this thing you should be continuously striving to a…”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 8:20 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund
Insight
Powerful AI technology is insufficient without user research and product design
“I think just having a great AI is not going to be enough. You need to actually like also marry that with great research, great product design, make it useful.”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 12:57 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund
Insight
Startups abandon design principles without a designer co-founder
“What he found was when he would return to those companies three, six, nine months after he'd do these design sprints with them, is that they would no longer practice these great design principles unless they had a designer on the founding team.”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 4:38 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund
Assertion Not checkable as stated
VCs passed on Airbnb because they ignored design as a differentiator
“So like Airbnb is a great example, like a ton of investors passed on them because they didn't understand design as a differentiation for them.”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 5:45 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Most venture capitalists still treat design as an aesthetic afterthought
“At the same time, I think there is still a vast majority of investors who view design as this thing that you kind of add on after the fact, or that is, you know, kind of a visual layer that is not necessarily available. A necessity in building a company”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 11:14 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund
Assertion Partly supported
86% of design students acquire their skills outside formal coursework
“We actually, even the design and tech report was saying that about 86% of design students say they acquire their skills outside of the coursework”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 6:33 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund
Assertion Supported
Designer Fund's Bridge program has a lower acceptance rate than Stanford
“We have about 90 designers that have gone through that program, 4500 designers have applied for it, so it kind of has a tougher acceptance, right, than Stanford or Harvard.”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 9:41 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund
Prediction Not checkable as stated
More designers will seek to become venture capital investment partners
“There's a lot more designers being angel investors, and I think we'll see more designers wanting to be actual investment partners.”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 11:03 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund
Insight
Operator VCs must evaluate founders assuming they won't build the product
“And so you really need to make a decision when investing, assuming that, that you're not going to be able to kind of work day in, day out and help them build the product. Do you still believe that they can get there right with you as a mentor coach, not you as…”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 18:24 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund
Insight
Designer Fund seeks products that are 3,000% better, not just 20%
“So one of the things that we look for when we're investing is, is something not just 20% better, 30% better, but it's something 3000% better.”
Ben Blumenfeld Feb 22, 2017 ▶ 25:27 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund

The other half of the tape: Ben Blumenfeld's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Steve Vassallo 3Harry Stebbings 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00213120172018episodesmentions
01120172018episodes it came up in
001.50.53120172018episodesmentions per episode
2018 3 mentions in 1 episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Feb 22, 2017 19m
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