Designing with a founder mindset - Helen Tran (Dive Club S5 | E12)

Helen Tran was an early designer at Shopify and is now leading product design at AngelList. But in between those two roles she also ran her own startup for three years. So the goal of this conversation is to figure out how that period of time impacted her design practice so we can all learn how to design with a founder’s mindset.
In this episode we discuss:
- How Helen is approaching design leadership differently this time around
- How Helen constructors hypotheses to influence product strategy
- Why Helen made sacrifices to her production skills
- The keys to designing in a pre-PMF company
- The #1 way to help founders
- + a lot more
Helen’s website - helentran.com/
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Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:49 Helen's career arc
5:34 How Helen's time as a founder influences her approach to design
10:34 How Helen is approaching her new role as design leader at AngelList
15:12 How Helen became a better thinker
17:57 Collecting the right data in the early stages of a product
23:09 How to ask better questions
27:34 Acting on your hypothesis
31:00 How to become a founder's best friend
32:28 Knowing what type of ideas are most valuable
37:02 Evaluating tradeoffs while inesting in your career
40:27 The benefits of a winding career arc
41:52 What AngelList looks for in designers
#productdesign #podcast #uiux

[@mahendrata87]

very insightful conversation

[@joindiveclub]

glad to hear it!

[@user-js9hh2ri7i]

Love how genuine Helen shared her story. Hopefully she'll be back for more in depth sharing of her experience in the early days of Shopify.

[@Jonesrful]

Helen is such a legend. Wonderful conversation.