What unique challenges and opportunities do founding designers face?   Starting out a new role tomorrow, any tips and advice that might come in handy?

What unique challenges and opportunities do founding designers face? 

Starting out a new role tomorrow, any tips and advice that might come in handy?

Exploring the Role of a Founding Designer

Product Designer

Exploring the Role of a Founding Designer- Grapevine

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

To all people who have switched from conventional corporate careers like consulting, banking etc. to a founder's office role

How has your experience been?
What worked/ didn't work?
What do you think is a long term play here?
What should one consider before switching?

Do mention the stage and industry. TIA!

Your founder's office role experience

Business Analyst

been working at a product based startup as the only ui/ ux designer for over 6 months now. work is usually solving for and designing new features, or thinking redesign from user grievances. the products were already designed for them by an agency before my joining and feel poorly designed to me, but does the job for the users. decisions regarding usage and the how-tos of implementation are taken by the product leads.

in such a scenario, i don't see myself taking product decisions, but i try to suggest my ideas (mostly accepted) when we frame the requirements and solutions. how do i grow from just largely only designing what my leads tell me, to actually making an impact with the products we have?

background- i'm an electronics engineer, landed a design internship at a startup a little before graduation and they offered a full time role after. accepted it over my placement and it's been over 6 months in this role.

thanks & cheers :)

Growth as a designer?

Visual Designer

The role seems to be rewarding monetarily compared to other starting roles. Was this an existing role with a new name to attract more?
Anybody from the Founder’s Office to say what your daily work looks like?

What’s Founder’s Office about?

Product analyst

Context: Folks do you think being a early member (~20 employees only) in a startup with founders who are celebrated entrepreneurs with immense influence and popularity helps you in your career and growth? The founder is a champion investor btw. Now I'm ONLY concerned about my personal growth as a PM.
Do you think it'll be useful for my future?

Need advice : Working under legendary and influential founders

Product Manager

Hello there!

Is anyone on here familiar with the requirements and expectations from people in Founder's Office roles? I'm trying to pivot to a role in Strategy and Partnerships within a FO and would like to pick your brains about what I should expect/ prepare for.

Seeking advice from people in Founder's Office roles

Analyst

About the series - Asking questions that you generally don't find answers easily or think they are too basic to be asked
Idea originated here - https://share.gvine.app/utBVxDbxRZxLFgzS9

Expanding the question - Most founders have worked high profile roles before going full time in building something of their own. The uncertainty in finances, in most cases reduction from the lifestyle their salary allowed them to maintain, how do they navigate that?

[Startup Series] Q1. To founders, how do you manage with deflated lifestyles?

Consultant

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

Got a following message from a strong founder:

"For the part-time role, we require 20 hours of work per week, and for full-time, we expect 40 hours of work per week.

We are currently raising Seed to launch our product, and while the challenge is significant, the impact you can make is also substantial. Currently, none of our team members receive a salary and work for future equity, and you would be in the same situation. However, as we raise more funds (which we have already started to do), we plan to pay market wages. This is standard practice for pre-seed startups."

What do you guys think?

Need advice for a founding member role

I’ve applied and interviewed for jobs before but this is the first time I have an interview for a start up, that too with the cofounder. Apart from the role technicalities, what are some questions I should ask the Cofounder?

Interview with Cofounder of a startup

Welcome to Business Roles's Private Community

Hello everyone,

Saw quite some people doing AMAs on this platform from VCs to Engineers, but nobody from Founder's Office roles.

Knowing that this role is somewhat new in the job market, not many people still know a lot about it. Shoot your questions, would answer them to the best of my capacity.

Background: Worked in the FO role for 2 FMCG brands, before joining a Fintech where I am working right now. Graduated from BIT, Mesra in 2021, but started working alongside my graduation coz of COVID.

AMA - Working in Founder's Office from past 3 years.

Founder’s Office

Hey Folks, Continuing from my previous post.
Any designer here who feels they are really skilled yet stuck doing mediocre work😶‍🌫️? I am looking for individuals who are designing for the passion of craft, individuals who gets to uncharted depths of user understanding, individuals who have realized they are more than just designers.

Comment or DM your portfolio or proudest work till date irrespective of your experience level. I will reach out to the right folks individually 🫰🏻

Giving exceptional designers a chance to shine

What would you say to a designer just starting out?

Operations Manager

I am working on a product(more or less thinking about it). I need to build a team of designer(s), tech folk(s) and a lot more.
The issue being ₹₹₹. How do you build teams that work on having an equity share and have an understanding of shared ownership? 
Where/How do I identify such people?

How to build teams  from scratch for a product that's just an idea

It’s just two of us currently, we have the thesis, pitched it to few VCs, extremely positive response, looking to close pre-seed soon by next week. 

Need: Want to design the prototype, and need a product designer with comms skills. 

Hint: We’re creating a luxury brand in mobility. 

Imp Note: 
- You can either join as a freelancer and work on this project while you’re working in your existing job. And if you wish to join us full-time into our product designer head, that also works, we can connect and speak about this more in detail. 

- This freelance prototype building will also be paid.

If you’re interested, you can hit me up at: nextgenproductx@gmail.com

Hiring Founding Product Designer for a Startup.

Senior Product Manager

I'm not clear on my future path. I'm currently a senior product designer but everything I read about principal product designer, makes me feel I'm already doing those. 

I want to understand from the market what's the expectation for principal vs senior and how different is it from being a lead.

Role expectations of principal product designer vs senior product designer

I am going to start working in building a product in a startup as a Backend developer. I was approached by 2 of the founders with their design and vision. I really liked it and thinking on working on the same.

But I was confused how to proceed with it? Shall I ask for money or some position? I don’t have any experience of it. Please suggest.

What do you look for when you join founders and build a product?

Software Engineer

I work as a Product manager at a series A well funded startup.
This company is run by a solo founder/CEO.

This is a wannabe tech and product startup that does not care about their product at all. The internal review meetings get 5 minutes on product and 55 minutes on business and operations on a good day!

All they care about is how to run operations and tech just works on automation instead of building the product for the end user. Every OKR cycle runs for two months where OKRs are set for product but we end up building internal tools because things get "re-prioritised" and operations "can not miss targets".

The worst part is that the strategy changes every 2 months and every week, the CEO keeps adding new "wants". Almost like a baby seeing shiny new toys.
At this stage, the product has become a mess with no identity at all!

This baby always says "But is that even do-able" acts critical and tries to seem smart in front of their employees while lying to the investors and board every other week that we are a tech and product company.

I don't know if this happens at other startups in India. 

Would love to hear what y'all have experienced.

Identifying a Baby founder

You sound like a tech bro, who thinks that only tech runs the world. Huge companies like Tata, reliance etc are built on solid operations and business insights.  
  
 Tech is enabler, if the founder is smart with business and operations, most likely he will make a good business, and unless you start valuing things beyond tech also, you will keep hopping jobs and cribbing why people don’t value you.

Transitioning to an SPM role (IC for now) in a new org soon and wanted some advice from the ones who’ve been there and done that (SPMs, VPs, Directors)

What are some absolute must-do things in the first 3 months to set the groundwork for success?

What are some common pitfalls to avoid?

Any good resources that helped you, please share :)

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