• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

StrictlyVC, LLC

Six months ahead.

  • Home
  • Newsletter
  • Advertising
  • Events
  • Podcasts
  • About
    • About Connie
    • Mission
    • Code of Ethics
  • Contact

Ben Blumenfeld

Designer Fund Closes Debut Effort with $20 Million

Screen Shot 2016-05-21 at 4.58.05 PMDesigner Fund, a San Francisco outfit that looks to invest in seed-stage startups that feature designers on their founding teams, has raised $20 million in funding from unnamed individual investors, most of them successful designers looking to support the next generation.

The four-year-old firm was founded by Enrique Allen and Ben Blumenfeld, who remain its only general partners. Previously, Allen was a designer with 500 Startups and Facebook’s fbFund; Blumenfeld was meanwhile an early design lead at Facebook who spent more than five years with the company. The two met at the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, which studies how computer design can change human behavior; when Blumenfeld left Facebook to take a sabbatical, they decided to form Designer Fund.

“We saw a lack of capital that really understood and valued design at the early stages,” explains Allen, who notes that Airbnb’s founders weren’t taken seriously at first because few understood how two design students could rethink and expand the travel market.

More here.

Filed Under: Fundraising Tagged With: Ben Blumenfeld, Designer Fund, Enrique Allen

Primary Sidebar

Sign Up!

Add your email below to receive a copy of our free daily StrictlyVC newsletter. (Please don't forget to confirm your email address by clicking on the link in the confirmation link we will send you!)

You can unsubscribe anytime. For more details, please review our Privacy Policy.

Thank you!

We have sent you an email. Please click on the link to confirm your subscription!

.

@StrictlyVC on Twitter

Tweets by StrictlyVC
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  • Advertising

StrictlyVC, LLC

© 2023 StrictlyVC, LLC. All rights reserved.