Steve Vassallo

is a former project leader and design engineer IDEO, with 77 patents and multiple product design awards to his name. Now, he is a general partner of Foundation Capital, where he heads the firm’s design practice and leads broader conversations among industry leaders about the art and science of building great products. Vassallo a recently published The Way to Design, a guidebook for becoming designer founder and building a design-centric company. the “For years I’ve had this growing conviction that design is now fact thing that will set modern companies apart. It comes from the that technology has been commoditised. It comes from watching in good design rise in consumers’ priorities. It comes from investing own companies started by thoughtful designers. It comes from my great background as a product designer. Design is the way to build products and great companies,” Vassallo says. “But when I’ve met with young designers who are considering and taking the entrepreneurial plunge, they seem as unprepared ( anxious) as I was when I was a bright-eyed designer at IDEO thinking of starting my own company. I wanted to do something last to help them, to give back to my community of designers. So, year, I put together a research team at Foundation Capital. We a war interviewed 50 designers, scholars, and tech founders; set up room to tease out what we’d collected; and tested those findings with the community. Now, after many months of work, what we’ve produced is a primer on how businesses should do design.” the His hope is that The Way to Design will open readers’ eyes to power of the design, as well as help guide any designers who own would like to take the leap into the unknown and found their company. Feast your eyes on an extract from the book over the next few pages.