Awesome People - Ep 106
design a product in 1 week, fundraising pitch decks, hiring designers
Hi founders and fellow VC Friends!
We deliver awesome people to your inbox. These are the people you need to know—the marketers, sales gurus, engineers, and ops wizzes— who give your startup superpowers 🚀. The best part is, everyone is hireable.
In addition to this newsletter, we also run a Pallet talent collective. We have 290+ pre-vetted candidates waiting for you to hire. We’ve officially opened up our Pallet to everyone, in web2 and in web3. It’s all the same long-term, anyway 🥰
Know someone who is looking for a job? Tell them to join our Pallet board.
Want to hire top talent? Join our Pallet Collective to get access to 290+ pre-vetted candidates.
Get 1 month 50% off the Pallet Collective with the code awesomecollective50, cancel anytime. If you’re a port co, you get free access, so email me for the fanciest of fancy codes 🤗
Please meet Jeremy Lubin, Your Freelance Product Designer 🧑💻
Jeremy previously spent four years as a Product Designer at Square. He’s currently making Queue, a nice, simple way to keep in touch with the important people in life. Over the past few years, he’s helped 20+ startups establish design systems, ship beloved products, and raise capital with clear, concise, and beautiful pitch decks. Before consulting, he led design for Square’s Invoices, Appointments, and Virtual Terminal products – tools used by millions of small business owners.
If you’ve used Decodable’s data stream processing platform, Slope’s B2B payments platform, Mink’s creator communication suite, Copilot’s sales assistant, or the Swoops NFT basketball experience, to name just a few, you know Jeremy’s work. And if you work with Jeremy, you may collaborate via the tools he designed at Square. Design comes full circle.
Jeremy was referred by Shre Shrestha, our Awesome People Fellow. He's trusted by the fine Fellows at South Park Commons and teams working in AI, web3, dev tools, fintech, big data, entertainment, healthcare, and even construction. His clients are backed by top-tier VCs, including First Round Capital, Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures, and more.
Hire Jeremy to help solve complex UX problems, tell your story, and grow your team. He specializes in:
Comprehensive product design sprint
Pitch deck narrative & design
Design candidate evaluation & interviewing
Jeremy is NOT a great fit for:
Brand identity (logos, brand colors, etc.)
Marketing design (landing pages, ads, etc.)
Research (customer discovery, formal usability testing, etc.)
I’m particularly excited about Jeremy because he works in 1-2 week sprints. Yes, that’s right, if you work with Jeremy, you can get a full product designed in 1 week. It’s AMAZING!!
Want an intro to Jeremy? Respond to this email and I’ll connect you! While he doesn’t share client work publicly, he’d be happy to walk you through a few past projects on a call or over a coffee.
Here are 3 ways Jeremy can help you + some pro tips ✨
Offer 1: Comprehensive product design sprint
What is it?
Product design is digital architecture. In the same way that you have an intuitive sense of where the bathrooms are when you walk into a restaurant, your users should have an intuitive sense of how to get around your app. They shouldn’t have to think. When in doubt, ask yourself the following questions for any design:
Navigation: Will my users understand where they are and how to get back?
Workflow: Have I made their task simple and unambiguous?
Context: Do I provide sufficient rationale for why this task is important?
We’ll ensure your product is architected so that navigation is seamless and the workflows are simple. Everything is based on a customized system of reusable components and guidelines, allowing you to scale.
What will you get?
Full pixel-perfect designs for your core application, along with a system of reusable UI component designs and guidelines with everything you’ll need to scale after our engagement.
How does it work?
I’ll embed with your team full-time for a 1-2 week sprint, depending on the complexity of your product. It’ll look something like this:
Day 1 – Discovery: I’ll review your existing product and any research you’ve done to make sure I deeply understand your customer and the problems you’re solving.
Day 2 – Direction: We’ll explore potential app architecture directions, and choose a high-level strategy for how to organize the workflows within your product.
Day 3 – Deep Work: We’ll design the core product workflows your product needs to support, making sure they fit seamlessly within our chosen architecture.
Day 4 – Details: I’ll make sure we’ve considered edge cases and error states, and incorporated all of your feedback.
Day 5 – Design System: I’ll package up all of the components and layouts we’ve designed into a full, reusable, and scalable system.
Offer 2: Pitch deck narrative & design
What is it?
Your pitch deck is the ultimate expression of your company, and writing a great deck can be an incredibly clarifying process. Here are my tips for a successful pitch deck:
Let your titles do the talking: Your slide titles should synthesize the content they represent clearly and concisely and read like a story. If someone were to flip through your slides only by reading the titles, they should understand every key point in your deck. Avoid generic titles at all costs.
Be specific and avoid jargon: Any time you use a word or phrase that requires your audience to do work in their head to figure out what you really mean, you’ve lost them. Instead of “unlock verticals,” say “expand into film, television, and video game production.” Instead of “bring capabilities online,” say, “add collaborative video editing, animation, and 3D rendering tools.”
Stick to one point per slide: There’s a temptation to keep the number of slides in your deck to a minimum, but I’d argue it’s more important to keep each slide crisp and clear than to adhere to an arbitrary limit. Any time you feel like a slide is doing too much – perhaps because you can’t come up with a concise title to synthesize your point – try splitting it up.
Together, we’ll make sure your deck tells a coherent, consistent, and comprehensive story that’s irresistible to investors and inspiring for you and your team.
What will you get?
A complete set of branded and styled slides that clearly articulate your vision.
How does it work?
I’ll embed with your team full-time for a 1-2 week sprint, depending on the complexity of your story. Together, we’ll answer these questions:
Problem: What problem are you solving and why?
Market Size: How big is the problem?
Competitors: Who else is trying to solve this problem?
Product: How is your solution differentiated?
GTM & Traction: Who will use your solution, and what do they think so far?
Team: Why are you the right people to solve this problem?
Ask: What are you asking of your investors?
Offer 3: Design candidate evaluation & interviewing
What is it?
Hiring your first designer can be especially tricky – you need someone with enough skill and craft to design features from the ground up today, as well as the leadership and coaching to build and grow a team tomorrow. Having interviewed dozens of designers for both large teams at Square as well as multiple small startups over the last decade, I’ve got a few thoughts on what to look for:
Empathy: Ask your candidate to explain the underlying motivations for one or two of the features they’ve designed in the past. Look for a deep understanding of customer needs. For example, “small business owners care deeply about their reputation – word of mouth is everything. They need to be able to preview invoices exactly as their customer will see them to feel confident that everything looks just right,” demonstrates deep custom empathy, whereas “invoice previewing was one of our top feature requests,” barely scratches the surface.
UX Design: Walk screen-by-screen through a complex workflow your candidate has designed. It should be clear at each step what the user is being asked to do and why. Nothing should feel confusing or unexpected.
Visual Design: I’d suggest taking a close look at the icons your candidate has used in a previous design – do they feel consistent in weight, size, and style? If so, this person is likely detail-oriented with a good eye for visual clarity.
Leadership: As designers, we can often hold our work dear and take feedback personally (I’m no exception) – the ability to let that impulse go is a sign of maturity and leadership. If you find an opportunity, I’d recommend offering your candidate critical feedback on a design decision of theirs. Look for a thoughtful response that considers your perspective rather than offering defensiveness.
If you need help evaluating portfolios or interviewing candidates in your pipeline, I can help.
What will you get?
A detailed evaluation of each candidate based on the criteria above.
How does it work?
Just add me to your interview panel or send over any portfolios you’d like thoughts on.
Want an intro to Jeremy? Respond to this email and I’ll connect you! While he doesn’t share client work publicly, he’d be happy to walk you through a few past projects on a call or over a coffee.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions and if you want an intro to Jeremy!
Stay awesome,
Founder of Awesome People Ventures & Talent
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Awesome People Continued 🤩
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