Mihika Kapoor

For anyone wanting to learn more about how we're working on AI as a design team here at Klaviyo, have a listen to this interview with Alexandra Holness

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The quote, "What are you being paid for? The confidence that I have in my taste and my ability to express what I feel," by Rick Rubin, is giving me toddler vibes. This quote popped up again in the latest episode of Lenny Rachitsky's podcast. Rick's guest, Dylan Field (CEO and co-founder of Figma), shared definitions that perfectly capture what I aim to achieve in my work: Designer: "Art applied to problem-solving," focusing on "taste and craft and understanding the options space, and caring about visual implementation." Product Manager: "Able to create frameworks that bring everyone along with them," with a focus on "strategy, a sense of business objectives, and an understanding of what users want."

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✨Re: Design hiring ✨ Every week I get about 40 inbound for Design opportunities and internships. I also know founders who are hiring and could use the connections. 🚀 Thinking of launching something soon to help solve(!) this. Meanwhile, DMs open.

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So late to the post, but ICYMI, we launched some stuff at #Config2024 last week. We've been cooking up a lot on our pillar — going from building Figma's second product (FigJam), to dreaming up its third, Figma Slides. Here's what we announced: Figma Slides: I'm especially proud of the designers on the team: Keeyen Yeo Khalil Cader Jakub S Ryan Reid Natasha T. Kylie To. For always asking "what if?" even though slides are a file format as old as time, for dreaming up new ways to interact with AI, for sweating the details on a tool that balances the needs of designers and everyone else alike. Try it out → https://lnkd.in/e_R6Pi_v FigJam Pages: We brought a fan fave Figma feature to FigJam! Big ups to rocky chen ✌️for striving pixel-perfection on this one → figjam.new

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"...product and design very much overlap." - Sarah Krasnik Bedell, Prefect In early companies, you might find one or two designers wearing many hats. They touch everything from marketing websites to product documentation. As companies grow, the design becomes even more integral, often woven into the fabric of growth teams. Whether it's a designer or a product manager with a design flair, the overlap between product and design is undeniable. Dive deeper into this synergy in our latest podcast episode! Don't miss out – listen now: https://lnkd.in/grUEreTj #ProductLedGrowthLeaders #Design #Growth #ProductDevelopment #Podcast

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🤔 I think we are on the cusp of a new UX design paradigm, powered by the latest gen AI image models. 3 days ago Flux was released, it is a new image-to-text model, similar to Midjourney, but with two incredible upgrades; 1) amazing “prompt adherence”, and 2) setting a new benchmark in text generation. What does this mean? Look at the experiment images below to find out! You now can use text-to-image to design complex layouts that include text, such as web pages and mobile apps. You can see this demonstrated in the images below. And then by modifying the prompt, I was able to iterate on the design using just text instructions. No, the results right now are not perfect, but these models keep improving all the time. There is no technical reason to think that text generation and prompt adherence can’t be perfect within 12 months. Previously, image generation models (Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Dall-E etc) were terrible at displaying text. And also, could not understand and interpret long complicated prompts. Now, with Flux this is possible. I ran some tests of Leonardo.AI’s new Phoenix model (released in June) vs Midjourney 6.1 (released last week) vs Flux.1 Pro (released on Friday), and Flux came out on top, with Leonardo a close second. The experiment below is all using this new Flux model. I’ll post the results of my tests tomorrow. What could the future of UX design look like? For professional designers who know how to use Figma, Photoshop etc this might not apply, but for non-professionals this could be an alternative to template (Canva) and no-code / low-code (Wix, Squarespace) products. Or perhaps it could be incorporated into those products. Right now, the most obvious use is for brainstorming, for quick mock-ups and revisions of concept designs. Which you would then take into one of the existing tools to create the final designs. It would be easy to have this to accept voice instructions and run off your mobile. If you need to redesign your website on the tram on the way to work, you soon can 🙂 I expect that someone will create an awesome new UX design ideation app with diffusion models at the core. If anyone is working on this please let me know!

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Ep. 007 of The Feedback Loop is here! It's the first half of startup pitches from New York Tech Week, and from an almost-all-AI batch of companies. Joining me on this episode: returning fan-favorite, Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures! For those not familiar, every week, a guest venture investor joins me to give granular and unfiltered feedback to founders on their storytelling and their concept. It's all about helping founders construct a better narrative for their move-forward -- because across fundraising, sales, recruiting, and company-building, it's the core narrative and pitch that can often hold startups back. And Jenny currently holds the tenure jacket as my guest co-host, with this being her 4th time on stage delivering quick insights and context you just can't find anywhere else. Massive shout-out to the founders featured: Matt Shenker building MatterMore, Karl White building Wroom, Trista V. building Nunchi, and Jeremy Da building Acrylic! Relevant links below.

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There's nothing more invigorating than to convene with and cultivate our design community. I had that honor by speaking on strategic foresight at the recent UXDX conference in New York a few weeks ago. First, a big thank you to the incredibly supportive UXDX team—Rory Madden, Catherine Madden, and Palina Viarbitskaya. Thank you for letting me bring some fresh thinking to our design community. Now more than ever, Designers need to expand their "T" even more. Fluency in designing futures is critical in this time of "perma-crisis" marked by perpetual war, lingering pandemics, environmental degradation, and profound human alienation. The future will be designed either consciously or by simply downloading past patterns. Design has a unique contribution to make to this field. We can create form out of the intangible and create harmony out of chaos. We can bring awareness to the hidden actors in a complex system and bring courage to the inevitable politics of preferred futures. Maybe I believe too deeply in the promise of conscious collaboration and creativity, but I hope I'm not alone. Let's make tomorrow desirable. Big shout-out to the fabulous UXDX community for your support. What an event with some incredible speakers such as Joe Meersman, Mamuna Oladipo, MBA, Jehad Affoneh, Chris Avore and many more. Thanks again for the opportunity!

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Wish your startup could ship even just 15% faster? Now imagine 50%. Design systems are for enabling just that and more. At Jasper, we surveyed our engineers after we migrated over to our new design system (from essentially not having one). We asked how it has affected their velocities—obvi, see the results below. My team's estimation was for a 20-30% increase, so seeing an AT MINIMUM 50% INCREASE in our initial results made more than a few scratch their heads in why we didn't do this sooner. Even if you're a team of 3, you need to have the foundations of a design system in mind from day 0. Consider your startup's trajectory if you could be shipping even 15% faster from day 0. I also happen to be available to join a team in need for what i'm saying and bring the same successes we had at Jasper. HMU. If you or your leadership still has hangups, here is a fun and quick read by Ana Boyer on some of the myth you might be holding onto. https://lnkd.in/gE74Qjgx

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we re-launched Surface Labs last week and drove 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀 to our website. the best part was that we were able to use our own product (Surface Labs (YC S23) to: 1. enrich leads 2. view funnel drop-off metrics in real-time 3. make adjustments to the form (we tested 4 different variations!) 4. and automate + personalize our follow-ups using the additional data our form collected but the most useful feature by far was the ability to 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗲𝘀 from visitors who didn't complete the final step of our form (booking a demo) but still opted-in to being contacted -- most of the time, 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙙𝙖𝙩𝙖 𝙞𝙨 𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙗𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙤𝙣𝙚𝙙. check out the form on our home page at withsurface.com !

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Check out the 4 step exercise at the end of the article. Excellent advice.

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🙋 Questions About Iterative? Ask in the Comments I often hear from founders that they haven’t applied to Iterative because they're unsure about how our program works, what we look for when investing, if they’re too early or too late, whether we invest in X, etc. Whether you apply to Iterative or not, it’s important to me that you have the necessary information to make your decision. So, ask me anything! Drop your questions in the comments and I’ll personally respond to them. If you have a question that you’d rather share privately, write “DM” in the comments and I’ll DM you. No question is too small or trivial if it helps you make a decision on whether to apply. If enough people ask questions, I’ll share my top 5 places to eat in Penang, Malaysia (my hometown).

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🎨 Ever thought a Bento grid could do more than just sit there looking pretty? No, me neither! But I figured I'd give it a go anyway 🙃 Here's how to use Figma and Weavely to design and publish an interactive Bento grid, working form elements and all! #figma #uxui #Bento #webforms

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I share this same dream with my buddy Naitik. I believe design founders are equipped with the tools and mindset to build an impact first business. Can anyone please share any leads on this for him and me to start exploring this possibility? #UXinnovators #designfounders

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There's three things I'm grateful for when I look at this picture that was posted to Nectar's slack a few days ago: 1. The breadth of what I get to work on as a designer at a startup. I only helped get this booth over the line towards the end of the process (credit to Mason Utley for doing 99% of the design work), but it's fulfilling have physical products I've designed out in the world. Coming from a software engineering background, I was never formally trained on print production and didn't expect to deal with it much. It's been fun and refreshing to figure out! 2. The quality of people I get to work with. Nectar has grown a lot in the two years that I’ve been here, and even as a remote employee and with limited in-person interactions, I know we’ve got a solid team. Probably because I see how often people are succeeding in their own spheres from all the shoutouts in our Nectar feed 😉. We’ve got a solid mission–help people feel more valued and appreciated at work–and core values that people fully lean into. We’re driven, and we’re fun 😄. 3. How hard everyone cheers each other on. Our slack’s been blowing up with all the hype and energy for this SHRM conference. Especially at a startup, every win is a big win, and gets celebrated accordingly. Congratulations on all the hard work and a successful conference team!

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Work at a natural pace. In Cal Newport's new book "Slow Productivity" he walks through 3 components to accomplishment without burnout. 1. Do fewer things 2. Work at a natural pace  3. Obsess over quality Working at a natural pace is an area I'm focused on as I transition to whatever is next in my career. Most of my career's natural pace was driven by anxiety, coffee, HIIT workouts and more caffeine - which I'm pretty sure isn't what he means. In my late 40's though, that just doesn't work anymore. Nor do I want it to. It's a tricky philosophy though because if you're in the startup world I don't know how you build something meaningful and work at a natural pace. I've never seen it happen. It appears this is a philosophy that needs to be applied to a specific time and place vs. everyone, everywhere. Anway, I don't have the answers, I'm just exploring different questions. What I do know is working at a natural place seems to be more appropriate for where I am today. 

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Days after launching our closed-beta, I just conducted our 1st UX interview with a user. Here are 3️⃣ lessons we learned. 1. Clarifying Core Feature: It became apparent that our unique value proposition – the ‘relationship score’ that guides our warm introductions – wasn’t as clear as we hoped. We need to make this more intuitive and transparent, ensuring our users leverage this insight when choosing who they want to meet. 2. Enhancing Customization and Relevance: During the interview, the user highlighted a filter missing from our platform—the ability to sort prospects by ‘company size.’ We see a path to building that feature and hope to integrate that soon. 3. Understanding the Key Use Cases: This user sees IntroHub as a tool for more strategic, high-value engagements rather than top-of-funnel lead gen. Whether it’s connecting with super connectors like VCs or engaging multiple stakeholders at a company with an active deal, this user wants IntroHub to support deeper, impactful business relationships that accelerate deals and foster partnerships. These insights are just the beginning. We’re committed to continuously refining IntroHub based on real user experiences in order to exceed community expectations. Stay tuned for more updates as we enhance our platform to empower your networking efforts 😍 #startups #userexperience #sales

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⭐ Start Up Reality Check - Getting to Product Market Fit ⭐ Clay’s Path to Product-Market Fit — A 7-Year 'Overnight Success' Clay co-founder and CEO Kareem Amin sits down with First Round Partner Todd Jackson for a behind-the-scenes look at how he grappled with narrowing Clay’s scope and tactics for landing on the right ICP. In the earliest days of building, the founder is the company. Their fingerprints are pressed across every nook and cranny of the business — each decision, hire and product feature. Most early-stage investors will tell you (us included) that the strength of the founding team is the single most important factor in whether a business sinks or swims early on. While some might tout that it’s the tangible stats here that matter most (like the founder’s previous experiences), Clay co-founder Kareem Amin believes that it goes many layers deeper. “Your personality plays a major role in your success because building a company exaggerates all of your traits. You’re influencing how things get done — for better or for worse. So you need to be able to clearly see what is going on in the organization and how your personality is being amplified through this process,” Amin say Read the Rest of the Article Here https://shorturl.at/Nm9vT 😀 👈 #startups #tech

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