Ideate Community Update #5
From securing major interviews to making big strides in development—here’s the latest on Ideate’s growth, partnerships, and product progress.
TL;DR
1. WE GOT THE INTERVIEW: Slauson & Co
2. WE GOT THE INTERVIEW: Bronze Valley Venture Lab (Gener8tor gBETA)
3. Continued interest in investment through Techstars Rising Stars program
4. Building updates
WE GOT THE INTERVIEW: Slauson & Co
We recently submitted our application for Slauson & Co’s 6 month Friends & Family accelerator program for Spring ‘25 and were thrilled to be invited for an interview. We are the first to admit that we have applied for many accelerators and identified a ton of potential partners, but Ideate x Slauson & Co appears to be a match made in heaven.
Here’s why:
1. The Network: Slauson & Co is strongly rooted in Los Angeles. LA happens to be one of our largest global markets for potential Ideate users. We believe that partnering with Slauson & Co could be invaluable for helping us reach additional investment and potential customers within a key market.
2. Ideal Applicant Profile: They are looking for us. What really stuck out in their applicant info was the emphasis on founding team lived experience. Ideate was born from my experience owning and operating a design agency and validated by the similar experiences of over a thousand other designers.
3. Investment Focus: Slauson & Co emphasis product-driven companies that empower small-medium sized businesses and that is exactly what Ideate aims to do. Although our tool has Enterprise implications as well, we believe that Ideate can empower smaller companies to compete at scale. With Ideate, freelancers and small design studios are now able to output on the level of a much larger or established firm.
4. Cherry on Top: Oh ya and did I mention that acceptance into the program comes with a $300k investment. This would be a huge step towards hitting our goal of our $1M pre-seed raise. With the $300k, we would have the ability to make key product design hires, grow our waitlist to 20,000, and launch our beta program!
WE GOT THE INTERVIEW: gBETA
We were also recently selected to interview for the Bronze Valley Venture Lab, which is a program ran through Gener8tor’s gBETA program. We are very excited at the opportunity to participate in this program this December. The gBETA program seems like the perfect way to equip ourselves with all of the necessary information that we need to close out our raise and go into an accelerator program this Spring. Furthermore, we are all about building our network and are really excited at the prospect of becoming a member of both the Bronze Valley and Gener8tor communities.
CONTINUE’D INTEREST FROM RISING STARS
As we get closer to the submission deadline for the Techstars accelerator program, we are eagerly awaiting the decision for the $100k investment through Techstars Rising Stars. Although, we have not gotten a final approval, we did receive word that they are still very interested in investing and we should hopefully be getting the final answer shortly.
Building Updates
The majority of you all reading this are not here for our investment updates. Although, the speed in which we are able to get you all to peak design efficiency is heavily reliant on access to funding, let’s get into the fun stuff.
Here’s what we built out this week:
Done
added ability to create multiple workspace
new page for listing users that belong to a workspace (soon be able to invite users to workspace)
page for workspace settings and account settings
Doing:
creating a page for listing projects in a workspace
ability to authenticate a user using Figma plugin so we get list of workspaces/projects that the user can add assets to
ability to view Figma assets you uploaded from Figma in Ideate
SIDE NOTE
I recently came across this book called The Design Conductors by Rachel Posman and John Calhoun. I am very excited to dive in to this Design Operations resource that they put together and highly suggest anyone else who is interested in the topic to do the same!
What’s Next?
We’re going to nail some interviews next week and each day we get closer and closer to the launch of our MVP. We are continuing our fundraising outreach, as well as seeking feedback from our growing community of designers.
How Can You Be of Help?
We’re looking to connect with more designers, art directors, creative directors, and studio owners.
Funding Sources : We’re seeking more intros to get the ball rolling on our pre seed round. If you know someone we should talk to, please share this substack or connect us!
Thank you for joining us in our journey to create a world where designers can just design.
Feel free to reach out directly at rahmi@ideatebetter.com
Thanks,
Rahmi Halaby
LETS GO!