A Journey Through Time: New Ventures and Reflections

Design sprints have become a staple of the creative process at companies around the world and an indispensable tool in the pursuit of innovation. We owe a debt of thanks to Jake Knapp and his former colleagues at Google Ventures (now known as GV) who pioneered the design sprint.

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There is one gap that design sprints have not entirely addressed, though. What do you do if you’re starting a new product or company from scratch? That is the subject of Jake Knapp and co-author John Zeratsky’s newest book, Click: How to make what people want. Jake lays out the elements of what he calls a “foundation sprint” in this book.

We chat with Jake about what makes a foundation sprint different than a design sprint, and some examples from the book of companies that have used foundation sprints effectively. We also talk to Jake about his decision to start Character, a VC fund aimed at helping startups at seed stage with capital and sprints, and the qualities that they look for in their founders when deciding to invest.

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Bio

Jake Knapp is a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Character.

Previously, Jake built products like Microsoft Encarta and Gmail, co-founded Google Meet, and invented the Design Sprint. He has coached hundreds of teams at places like Miro, Slack, LEGO, IDEO, and NASA on product strategy and time management, and is a guest instructor at Harvard Business School.

This is Jake’s third appearance on Design Better. In his first interview with us, he discusses Sprint, and in his second interview he talks about his (and John Zeratsky’s) book Make Time.

Books & links mentioned

• Ten things we know to be true
• The Making of Prince of Persia
• The rest is history podcast
• Met opera on demand
• https://jakek.medium.com/

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