Aside from serving as founding designer and head of design for more than a dozen startups in our portfolio, I also created a design fellowship program to empower the companies to build faster, while fostering the next generation of creative entrepreneurs committed to driving innovation and making the world more inclusive.

The fellowship program would explore the future by bringing together artists, storytellers, and creative thinkers with futurists, technologists, philosophers, and policy makers. The fellow partnered closely and co-designed technology thoughtfully with the founders across Prime Movers Lab’s portfolio.

The design fellowship program functioned as an extension of Prime Movers Lab’s internal design team and a shared resource among our portfolio company design community. The fellows would be the forward-deployed designers to work closely with the founders, spending 1-2 years at various portfolio companies helping them get their teams off the ground before rotating to the next company.

The program attracted talents from diverse backgrounds all over the world, with a 70% representation of women and people from non-traditional fields to come together and collaborate on inclusive solutions to build more and move quicker.

We have seen great success in supporting our portfolio companies, aiming for a lasting positive impact and accelerated growth towards inclusive leadership. It also gained us better access to high-quality deal flow, particularly with serial entrepreneurs, positions the firm well among breakthrough science venture firms.

Prime Movers Lab now has more than $1 billion in assets under management and continues to focus on investments in breakthrough scientific startups working to revolutionize the most important industries and transform billions of lives.

Program Development
JJ Moi / Ashley Nowicki / Kenny Lauer

Design Direction
JJ Moi

Further Readings

Prime Movers Lab
→ VC firm betting on far-out tech raises $245 million for new fund – Bloomberg → Prime Movers Lab named to Inc's list of founder-friendly investors – Inc
→ Now is the time for startups to hire top talent – Fast Company
→ Startups should look for VC firms with unfair advantages – Forbes

Portfolio Companies
→ UN unveils the world’s first floating city – UN Habitat
→ Are floating cities a real possibility? – Smithsonian
→ CarbonCapture raises $80M from Saudi Aramco – Reuters
→ Floating cities answer to rising sea levels – Bloomberg
→ Atom Computing could forever change the US electrical grid – Forbes
→ Make supersonic flights a reality again – Wired
→ Axiom Space partners with Prada on Artemis spacesuits – SpaceNews → World’s largest vertical farm has a secret ingredient – Fast Company
→ Prosthetics still lack inclusivity – CNBC
→ Mushroom leather got one step closer to mainstream – Vouge
→ New pilotless plane that can fly up to 200 miles – Business Insider
→ Turn laser fusion into clean power plants – Science Journal
→ National Lab unlocks nuclear fusion – Forbes
→ Hypersonic planes travel to the edge of space – Gizmodo
→ Mushrooms the future of alternative leather? – New York Times
→ World’s only carbon-neutral spaceship – CNN
→ Passenger aircraft that flies at Mach 9 – Ars Technica