UX: the hidden superpower you should know about
When evaluating the Creandum funds’ portfolio, one thing stands out: we back teams who build great products. This is true for most stages in a company’s trajectory, from roaring products that have real customers, to grand ideas scrawled on a napkin (or usually, pitch deck).
We back teams who build great products, and UX is the founder superpower to demonstrate their vision.
Often we’re evaluating tamed iterations of a wilder dream, which begs the question: how can we invest in pre-seed deals, whilst caring so much about a highly-finessed product.
The underlying thesis is that we want founders to understand how to build great stuff, and that they’re capable of crafting an experience which serves their vision.
This may sound intuitive and cliched, but it’s often at odds with what happens. Deadlines, internal pressures and poor hires act as barnacles on a ship, pulling down on your trajectory.
In short: life gets in the way.
I should introduce myself: I’m Peter Ramsey, and while I’m not helping Creandums portfolio (I’m an entrepreneur-in-residence), I run Built for Mars — a trifecta of a UX consultancy, design studio and a 12,000+ strong UX community.
I’ve been lucky enough to run UX audits and experiments for (probably) billions of users, between my clients like Stripe, Klarna and Notion. I obsess over the tiny stuff.
So let me give you a 60-second overview of what UX is, and why it should become your next superpower.
🤷♂️ 1. What is UX?
Let’s cover some terminology first:
- UX (user experience): this is how stuff works.
- UI (user interface): this is how stuff looks.
I’m genuinely a terrible UI designer (ask anyone at my design studio), yet I’ve built a career optimizing UX, through tiny improvements. They’re totally different skills.
For example, plenty of apps have fantastic aesthetic designs (gradients, rounded corners, awesome illustrations), but are horrible to use. Have you ever tried using Amazon Prime’s TV app? It looks pretty good, but it’s so unperformant that I don’t bother scrolling much.
Here’s an abstract representation I like:
What I (and UX in general) try to answer is this: “why aren’t people using my perfectly paved path”.
One answer could be that walking diagonally is simply a shorter distance. But, it may also be that the treeline provides much-needed shade during summer. Or, that after heavy rain the pavement puddles, whereas the grassy verge absorbs the water quickly.
In fact, there could be hundreds of rational observations, none of which are impacted by how aesthetically pleasing the edging on the pavement is.
In other words: the edge cases of usage may look nothing like the idealistic scenario, and so the ‘happy path’ may fail horribly.
To be clear, a great product needs both a carefully curated UI and UX. So the paving is also important — I’m being facetious to make a specific point.
🎉 2. Why we care about UX
Firstly, let’s address the obvious:
- Helping users quickly identify the value of your product, and cutting the fat, will decrease your churn (or, increase your conversion rates).
- Because of this, your unit economics improve, which all investors love to see.
- People enjoy using products that feel good and are more likely to share it with their friends (i.e., greater velocity of referrals).
- Great experiences, in an industry full of mediocre ones, can be your USP. You may not be reinventing banking — just making it easier to do.
But I’ve seen other benefits, which people rarely discuss. Here are three more:
- Potential employees will likely visit your website prior to an interview, and it’ll set an impression of your entire organization. Do you have a buggy app that barely works on mobile? That says something about your management.
- Having a beautiful UX encourages developers and designers to care more, and anecdotally, will incentivise individuals to raise their standards. It’s easy to be sloppy with releases when your whole app sucks. On the other hand, nobody wants to be the developer who released the only bug.
- Even if the product generates the same utility (with a bad experience), competitors and potential acquirers may value your start-up more, because creating good stuff is hard.
That’s why we care. It’s also why you, and every other VC / investor, should care.
If you’ve got the UX bug, the slide below is a snippet from this presentation I made a few months ago, titled: The ROI of investing in UX during a recession.
Or, if you really really really want to learn more about UX, I routinely publish free analysis on Built for Mars. If you’re on track building a great product, get in touch with the Creandum team!
