Ekaterina Gianelli & Thomas Madsen-Mygdal

So to explore design with all of you and possibly with the best title of the day, the Nordic Design Jam, please welcome E. Katharina and Thomas. E. Katharina & Thomas Thanks, Neil. A pleasure to be here today with all of you and thanks a lot for inviting us. So during the next half an hour, we'll try to talk about design and what design can do for the Nordic tech ecosystem overall. I guess our main goal is that all of you get a couple of tips or tools that you can use in context of your companies later on. And of course, all of us are really tired, so we'll try to make it short and interactive. Great. So to join in the jam session, we've been put together. We didn't know each other before. We've even joined together all our slides, which was an interesting exercise in itself. So with me, I have E. Katharina Janelli from Inventure. E. Katharina was part of building, if short, a very big Nordic design, Nordic European design agency, up from 20 people to very big. She claims she's not a designer, but I think she is, like a lot of people in the room. And she's currently one of the few design backgrounds at a VC firm in Europe. Not really, I guess. None of us consider ourselves as a designer, right? And Thomas, CEO and co-founder of 23 Video Marketing Platform. Thomas is an active angel investor, has been involved in many startups here in the region. Podio is one of them. Thomas got into design in the 90s, so a long time ago, designing websites first. So he has been following design for the past 20 years. So what is actually design or design thinking? Obviously, when we talk about design, we talk about look and feel of services. At the same time, we feel that technology is becoming less and less visible and experiences that we get while we interact with this technology become more and more important. So look and feel is, of course, not the only thing. On top of it, there is positioning, branding, internal processes, external communication with customers and many other things. So when we talk about design or design thinking, we refer to an approach to solve problems overall. So what does tech and design have got to do with each other? If you look at the design, the classic design world and the classic design term, it's really been on a sort of broadening scope the last 30 years, going from what you guys would know as graphic design, design design, or feels like architecture, etc., converging around the label term of design. So in combination with the tech world that we all know, going from B2B, very geeky stuff in the 50s up to still very geeky stuff, tech stuff, to being suddenly something that was actually individual focusing in the 70s and the 80s and nowadays are consumer brands with marketing and positioning and all kinds of stuff. So we basically see these two worlds converging at this point, where the design term is also used enormously across everything and everything what we do actually is design. If we look at design in tech, you know, sort of design is not new in tech. Actually, when I discuss with design design guys and girls, we pioneered actually a lot of stuff, ethnographic methods at Intel, user-centered design in the 80s with human-computer interaction, tool-based open-ended design, which we know more about than the most complicated product system design with many different touch points on product and obviously data-driven design, which everyone looking at MVPs that are no extremely well nowadays. And then obviously if you change the term tech design heritage and actually look at the Nordic design heritage, we actually look at a lot of the similar words up here and I would make the proposition to you guys that I actually think design is one of those hidden unfair advantages that we used the last 30 years. We're not really aware of it, but a lot of the reasons why we have all the unicorns, why we have all the crazy numbers that you saw in the morning is because we have this very broad inherited sort of design heritage in all our staff members. Our engineers are more design-driven, engineers everywhere. Our CEOs and founders are more design-driven, etc., etc., etc. So overall, it's very hard to measure return of investment on design. At the same time, there are many different studies that prove that design-driven companies perform a lot better than their other peers in all kinds of aspects. And of course, each dollar invested in design could bring up to a hundred in return. Then we have the whole discussion of who are designers and who are not designers. If you look at what defines a great entrepreneur and a great company, it is basically that they are extremely well designed. It is, you know, if you look at the definition of designers as being a conscious awareness of your creation, no great company won't have a great product, a great story, great marketing, great internal procedures, great organizational design, great events, great culture. A great CEO, a great founder will make design decisions every, every day. Every day they will make the call on something is a great design or not a design. And more and more, especially with younger generations, they will be extremely active in a lot of this design, right? Hence the late night discussion of the press releases between the VCs and the entrepreneurs and everyone else becoming very funny exercises because actually sort of everyone actually knows a little bit about this stuff nowadays unlike ten years ago where the PI agency ran it, right? And obviously also if we look at sort of the startup ecosystem, there are a lot of stuff we're seeing, you know, design-driven founders, the designer as part of the founding team that we like to see, I guess, nowadays. Nowadays in growth companies, 20, 30 people upwards, you have creative directors, you have great angels that have design product-driven experience, you started seeing a lot of VC side, you nowadays even see design agencies doing work for equity and starting investment funds. Some of us old enough to have seen this before will cry bubble but it's happening again, right? So there's suddenly a lot of attention to design. And finally to continue on that, we feel that there are plenty of designers already in both startups and corporates. At the same time in VCs there aren't unfortunately many, especially in Europe. So just to compare Europe to US, it's very easy to see that the European VCs are really lagging behind. While in the US there are more than 20 design partners or designers in investment teams, in Europe there is hardly any or one or two guys. And definitely we see that there is a big opportunities for VCs to pick on this trend. Design can definitely increase the value of investment, many different things that designers can help, both pre-investment and post-investment. So designers can help you evaluate teams or evaluate potential investment targets, assess how customer-centric the team is and stuff like that. At the same time there is a lot you can do post-investment, supporting your portfolio companies with building the products and services, supporting the team building of the portfolio companies and overall increasing the awareness of design among the portfolio companies. So to sum up this part of the jam, before we get you guys to join in on the jam, a great man once said first we create the tools, then the tools create us. Our creations have an impact in the world and the times where people in this room would be able to get away by just saying we're just tech people are winding down from every day, right? That we don't pay taxes in the country we live in, that we don't contribute to society, that our creations actually are some of the dominating design elements in the world, right? We design things that shape the world tremendously every day. So raising our awareness and our consciousness about the creations we do and how they impact the world, obviously also how they work commercially well, but also all the secondary impacts of our creations I believe is more important than ever that we really get to that level of understanding, right? The Peter Thiel era is sort of starting to wind down and the era of tech being sort of part of society is winding up, right? Thanks for that. Okay, as we said, now we'll start to get you guys in on the jam. This was our quick observation. So we'll now split you into 14 groups depending on your background. So if we can have six VCs or six leaders of VC groups, so me, Estina, Sean Linos and then Nicholas to stand up. And then if we can have the rest of, if each of you can take a table please and then the rest of VCs will join either of these guys. So we should have groups of seven to 10 people. Maybe if you can take different tables. And then well same with the interpreters. So if we can have Gullnass, Andreas and Niels. So if you can guys drop one table and again if all the interpreters would split into three groups. Super, same with Angel. So if we can have Hampus and Tommy to take a table each. Tommy is up here, Hampus is down there. So Michael if you can grab this one maybe. So you should be five to seven people in each group. Mr. Bachak we are waiting for you. Okay let's get to that. Okay we got two angel tables up here. Everyone considering themselves angels. Yes we're joining up. Okay all please get seated again. We're ready to go. Ten seconds. Okay so we are ready to start the your part of the jam. You got ten minutes. So what we would like you to do is to discuss how can we better at design from your own perspective. So either from a VC perspective or from interpreters or angels. So if you're an angel how can you be better at using design and promoting a design. In ten minutes we'll run around and ask you to present a couple of ideas. So if you can put all of them somewhere on the poster. So you all got a piece of paper and a pen. Please jot down your ideas and we'll all put them outside afterwards while we have drinks. So you can all take a look. Please start the jamming then. Super so ten minutes. Connect or I can't risk that going. I can argue that but the design is more than just the front. There's UI. More moderator. Much pressing. I just think design is just one of the we're starting to invite people. And give a brand or a management resource for it. Yeah absolutely. I mean you're not worth half of your size. We have a lot of the two. If we had a bit more we would get a design. They have one heavy. And they have a lot of the I think it's great. Well that's the definition of what a designer is. Works. I'm advertising too. Is that perfect? I actually made a lot of the pieces already have the sign. Go ahead. Think about your evaluation of what the customer is. That's the same thing. Game mechanics. 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The other people Get to do the work So I'm not even sure we synthesize Maybe it was a very very synthesized We decided to synthesize Good luck getting it No problem Let's do that Here we go I think that's a good decision We should Do it Yes Let's start off with the last one Very cool Let's go We purposefully built this group Design Design By design Design What do you mean by this? It's easy to shoot Someone within the DC Who is nice on Facebook Color manager Science Or we think that Color managers Designers I think that With some I think they're quite different The brands of DC The brands of DC The brands of DC The brands of DC Okay We write the comments Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Good Good Good Good Good Good Good Good So guys, 30 seconds left and then we continue. Okay, that's it. We'll do a quick check in here with every group, starting with Linus. Time's up. Okay, so Linus, can you show your poster and tell us what you guys have been thinking about? Linus is talking, I'm holding. Okay, so first we sort of felt that design is kind of a limited and narrow way of seeing the entire sort of topic. We felt that it's a lot more about building a product and it doesn't matter whether it's just doing UX in one aspect or it's onboarding or something else. Historically it's been sort of you separate design as one sort of area you need to be very good at. And now we see it's something that really conquers and sort of is everywhere in whatever you're trying to build. So sort of jumping a little bit, that means that we think that it's more about getting more product people into VCs and whether that's them jumping ship or whether it's VCs recruiting them. You know, you guys can think about that one for a bit. And we kind of feel that unless we got that, VCs should sort of stay out of the portfolio companies and have so much opinions about it, especially if they don't have sort of the product expertise. And then if you do have that, then we sort of have this opinion that bad design is quite likely that it's not going to be a phenomenal company sometimes. Okay, great. Next up. Maybe we can continue with you. So we kind of got stuck right in the beginning to a question that what is design and kind of we concluded that VCs really would need help to educate them about what is design and how could design help VCs. And we were thinking where to get this information. So maybe one should start exporting this maybe from the US and ask from the US VCs how what their experience have been. How are they helping their portfolio companies or how their decision making is going with designers? Or of course, you can use agencies here in Europe, but maybe those agencies are not so VC driven. So we have a bit of a dilemma in our group. Great. Then we have Nils here with the entrepreneurs perspective. Right. So we fairly quickly honed in on that design needs to be like thought of from the beginning and like a top down approach. It's not something that you add to a product afterwards, but it's something that when you design the whole business, you need to take a very holistic approach. So that was the first the first thing that we kind of agreed on. The second thing was that the kind of processes that you use when designing good products can be applied in other areas. So apply design thinking across your business units and let it be part of like all the areas. And the third thing we thought of is that good design is often very tied to fast iteration. Like you will be able to test ideas quickly. And one thing that we found that many companies are perhaps afraid of is to show what you're working on. So another key learning would be to expose it to users early, not necessarily to let the user drive the design, but to learn from how the user sees your product. Great. Thanks. All right. If we can continue with the entrepreneurs. Yeah. So in our case, we try to think about the usage of design in product development and what we clearly established that it's important to have tracking and data proving all the iterations you're doing in the design. So we even sort of narrowed down to this loop test and try track and iterate. We've also discussed that all the decisions they have to be made fairly quick. And there has to be an environment where you'll be able to track and understand what the things that you are doing, they're working or not. And that's kind of can conclude can be concluded into prototyping. So where you sort of like make really, really fast iterations and you're able to see immediately whether those changes there are working. Yeah. Yeah. Before even you move to the regular general prototyping for saying super thing. Great. Then we have the angel perspective here. We're moving fast. So the angels, I think one of the topics we talked about a lot is education. Like what is design as another table brought up. And I think what we view design is helping people talk about what is the problem they're trying to solve. Who is the user and what is the journey? And very, very hands on that any investor can can help a company is they can ask people just like seriously ask people that they listen to the founder. They can just ask people how they would use the product and help out in the process. They can record themselves using the product and send the very shameful videos to the user. How is going to mount the stupid product to use it. They can force the startup or with the startup meet users. The second point is get it on the agenda. Having a discussion of how you measure design and setting up those metrics and what are analytics tools is a great exercise. Because it gets very hard and that that that discussion is a really good discussion. And then the third one is, of course, finding talents that we all can help us start up with. So those are the three things educate what design is get it on the agenda and then find talent. Thanks. Cool. Now we have another investor table. OK, yeah, so we start out with what do we actually mean with the designs? And we decided it was we want everything to be approachable, friendly and accessible, really focusing on putting your customers first and focusing on solving a problem. And then we had a discussion if the customer for a VC is an LP or the entrepreneurs. So we started with entrepreneurs and discussed the VCs needs to, you know, to when you really have implemented design thinking, you're reducing the friction between the investment managers and the entrepreneurs. You respond fast and it's more like service oriented and work on, you know, like control like the old school in terms of the LPs. That was a hard one. We because they really want good returns and we don't know how to employ design except for delivering good returns. Yeah, I think that's it. And do you think design can help with positioning towards help? Sure, we didn't discuss that, but I definitely think that. Cool. Thanks. Great. We go next for the entrepreneur perspective again. Andres. Great. Thanks. OK, so I'll try to stand here so you can see it. OK, so we thought there are a lot of processes in Orion that can be quite binary like. This is our failure. So we took one and we think by deploying design thinking on funding, you could get some pretty interesting tools and languages internally for building idea of what's really great and value adding process. So we have created some terms for you. The first one is tooling angels. So the highlight here, if you could be, if you were a bit more design thinking towards which angel you add, what you want from them after you add them to your round and how you think they could add value, you could actually increase maybe the quality of the conversation. Next one here is feedback loops. Use more feedback loops, make them tighter and faster and keep on thinking of funding as a process where you keep on learning. And if you learn faster, you'll fund better or at least more and more qualitatively. Then we have output engagement engineering for you guys. So engineer the output of your round. So what you really want from it, what's the important part? What would it look like? And we have skill mapping. What's the skill team? What you've got? What do you need? Be more quantitative about it and keep on developing an idea of how you could develop your skills. And last we have engagement strategy. So how are you going to engage? What's a good engagement strategy for you guys and what are you good at? Super. So now we move to community guys. Yeah. Hi. I won't show you the picture in case you couldn't see anything. So basically we took also kind of a design thinking approach to the community side, focused more on how to make the communities work in a way that they should work, basically being as inclusive as possible, kind of increasing the number of interactions within the community, but also between different kinds of communities and kind of how to make it easier for people to enter the community from the outside when they don't have the connections. We also discussed some concrete measures how to improve that, putting up a Facebook page. Organizing events and stuff like that. Also touched shortly on the kind of the community aspect of Slush, which has been like completely mind blowing for us as well, completely surprising. And it turns out like thinking from a user experience point of view from the like the volunteer being the user, probably one of the deciding factors on how it has become so successful is that we give responsibility to the volunteers. And because of that, they feel valued and want to share the message. Great. Sean, thanks. So we had a pretty diverse group of funds here and we polled everyone to see who actually have designers on staff. So two out of seven actually do. So Five Hundred Startups has creative director. You guys do some design services. Most centered around branding, though, so not really UI or experience. Are they involved in investment decisions? They're not. No, they work with the accelerator. They work with a later stage portfolio. Yep. But mostly on branding. We talked a lot. Our companies usually have product market fit. So but their brand looks like shit. And so sort of elevating the brand beyond that, we kind of agreed. Yeah. Good design is simple. Design should reduce friction, whether that's an onboarding or understanding what the product does. We disagreed slightly on does design drive product market fit? So we kind of went back and forth on that. Talked a little bit of how it depends on industry. Mosaic is the example of like, you know, they didn't invest in a company because it looked like it was built in the 90s, but it was a fintech product. And so fintech, you know, you don't really need sexy design. I ranted a little bit about sort of Nordic design. It's a strength, but it's also a weakness. I we do investments in over 100 countries. I've never seen countries get slower or be slower to getting to market, typically because design is holding them back. So literally you have guys in Hudson, Africa that are getting to market faster than Nordic founders because they just launch it and iterate and improve. Whereas here, if you think about that button too much and you want to make the shine just right and all this stuff, you know, it's going to delay you getting to market. So design is important, but should not delay you getting to market and getting product market fit as fast as possible. Super. Thank you, Sean. Nordic design inherits it as a disadvantage. That was a good one. So one more VC table. Yes. So as we see, naturally we had issues understanding the question. So how we how we approach it was that we started with what we thought was important today for us as we see. And then what we could do better or what will probably be more important in the future. Maybe you do this part and I start with this part. So today, I think for me, she's especially the branding and the image and the website itself are very relevant for for this could be for startups taking it out. Co investors and so on just how you present yourself online. And I've personally gotten that feedback before from a founder that he thought our old website, which we revamped since then, was so conservative that he didn't want to work with us. And the other part is that especially in consumer facing software, I think it's very relevant today because the people are more and more used to really good experiences and well designed software. And. Yeah, so the follow on the last point, there's been a lot of buzzwords around consumerization of enterprise. So we also think that consumers who work in big businesses want to interact with products that look and feel very similar to the ones that that power their everyday applications in the personal space. We also think that design DNA founders is going to become an increasingly important measure of having a well rounded team because that helps you build differentiation in the very early days of a company's life when there's lots of competitors that have similar functionalities in their products. But where recruitment of users can can essentially be driven by more experiential product. And then over time build more differentiated technology that underlies it. So then we can have this idea of design that engineering, which is to say that if you if you take a company that starts out with a lot of back in engineers, for example, at some point, they will need to productize and have a have a UI that faces the end user. And in theory, we believe that the way that that interface will behave to deliver the value that the company wants is going to impose certain considerations and constraints on how the product in the back end should be engineered. So we think that having user experience leads in the early days of a company's life is important for influencing engineering decisions. Thanks. OK, last but not least, and we're going fast here. All right, perfect. Fast version. We arrived at three points. First design due diligence. So how can we understand the inability to execute design as a risk and work with that and understand that design culture is the company does it have a design culture? Is it something we can help promote? And finally, design talent. So can we help them maintain, develop and and basically attract design talent to the company? OK, thanks for that. So thanks for being part of this little MVP on a design jam. Started out with the idea that we're not going to give a normal talk and put together, you know, we didn't know each other. So we're just going to end up on two quick pledges. So requests. One first of his mind that I think we've actually been living off about 30 to 40 years of heritage here. And us as an ecosystem hasn't actually been very engaged in driving design at large. And how about perhaps the theory if the furious that we've been living off it, the pepsi time with all the design focus there is everywhere else in Europe and especially in the U.S. Also that we really as an ecosystem needs to see this as a competitive advantage that we need to keep up with not fight off the guys in Africa and a hot and go into pixel perfect design, but to keep driving the heritage. Right. So that was my request. Then we also sought to try to point put several points to get on how or what visas could do today to improve the situation. Because we at least we thought that they definitely need to improve. So hire designer, of course, one easy easy point that you can do work with some freelancers or work with some angels who are experiencing design like Thomas, for example, try to promote design among your portfolio. Try to do events, invite external speakers and stuff like this. So these are just some of the points that we thought you could do immediately. Thank you. So we will wrap everything up, I guess. So all the posters, if you can leave all of them on the table, we'll get all of them and do some kind of summary that we'll share with all of you afterwards. Thanks.