Introducing the Huddle Venture Partner Program
Meet the ten builder-investors in our inaugural cohort.
At Huddle, we’re in the business of powering more entrepreneurship in the world.
We want it to be easier for founders to build the future they believe in. And for creators to go independent and build equity and wealth on their own terms.
We build teams for building things. By taking out the slow, messy middle of finding teammates, Huddle helps more startups launch, scale and succeed.
Today, we’ve decided to go a step further.
I’m SO excited to announce the launch of the Huddle Venture Partner Program, focused on builder-investor hybrids bringing diverse ideas and bridging the gap between creators and founders.
For our inaugural cohort, we’ve selected ten VPs that actively support their network of startups and fellow builders. They’re partnering with us on everything from deal flow to advising startups on Huddle to mentoring builders in the community. We’re also working on creating opportunities for them to invest in the startups building on Huddle.
By creating an avenue for Venture Partners to support their portfolios and networks on Huddle, we hope to unlock more founders and creators building amazing things together.
Get to know our first cohort of Venture Partners (VP1) below:
Soleio — Designer × Investor
Soleio is an American designer-turned-investor based in London. He previously led early design efforts at Facebook, Messenger, and later Dropbox. Soleio now backs exceptional, design-forward startups at their initial stages, such as Figma, Framer, Vercel, Vanta, Synthesia, and many more around the globe. soleio.cv
Ben Blumenrose — Co-founder, Managing Partner, Designer Fund
Ben is the Co-founder and Managing Partner at Designer Fund, where he backs exceptional founders and empowers them with design to improve the world. Before Designer Fund, Ben was a Design Lead at Facebook for over 5 years where he helped build products for nearly a billion people and grow Facebook’s world-class design team. He was also the Design Director at Varien which he helped build into one of the world’s leading e-commerce firms and a designer at CBS where he designed many of their primetime show web experiences.
Amber Illig — General Partner at The Council Capital
At The Council Capital, Amber invests in proven operators who are bringing the best of tech to legacy industries in Healthcare, Fintech, and Vertical SaaS at the earliest stages. In addition, she leads The Council Angels, a group of 80+ female operator-angels with experience at companies like Figma, Slack, Airbnb, Lyft, and Webflow. Before running The Council Capital full time, Amber held various operations leadership roles at companies like Cruise, Snap, Apple, Eli Lilly, and Atmos.
David Hoang — Head of Design at Webflow, Angel Investor
David Hoang is a design leader, angel investor, and writer. He’s currently Head of Design at Webflow and previously led design at One Medical, Black Pixel, and scaled the On Deck Design fellowship as a Design Partner. He’s invested in 25 seed stage startups to advise as a product and design operator.
Tara Tan — General Partner, IDEO Creative Capital
A designer and investor, Tara partners with technologists to bring their visions to the world. For the last 7 years, she helped lead the venture arm of global design & strategy firm, IDEO, building a $500M AUM portfolio with notable investments across fintech, emerging technologies, and consumer and enterprise software. Tara holds a Masters in Design & Technology from Harvard University, where she was appointed Co-Chair of Women in Design.
Chante Harris — ClimateTech Operator and Investor
Chante Harris has spent her career scaling nationwide campaigns, technologies, and ideas for the Obama Administration, Fortune 500 companies, and startups championing the energy transition. Named by Forbes as a 30 Under 30 in the Energy Category, NASDAQ as a Woman to Watch in 2022, ACEEE as a Champion for Energy Efficiency, GreenBiz as 30 Under 30 Leader and more. In addition to her work leading in climate tech and investment, Chante launched and built the only global digital collective and community that is 100% dedicated to advancing women of color working across the sustainability industry.
Steph Engle — Product Designer at Snapchat and Angel Investor
Steph is a Product Designer, investor, and multi-hyphenate based in Los Angeles. She previously designer all sorts of future-y subjects at Airbnb, Cruise, and Meta’s Reality Labs. She is a huge proponent of the future of fractional work via Huddle and other platforms–she dabbles herself in helping startups, scouting for a VC firm, running a short term rental, and selling horses.
Tom White — (Ghost)writer, Investor, Advisor
Tom works as writer, advisor, and investor. After stints at Stonks, On Deck, Google, he has a “portfolio career” writing, editing, researching, and ghostwriting professionally for a number of startup/F500 executives, VCs, and fund managers; advising for a fund of funds; consulting on web3/growth/storytelling/customer psychology for a number of different international B2B and B2C startups; and penning a free weekly newsletter on books and behavior, psychology and philosophy called White Noise.
Olga Orda — CEO, Hypemachine
The CEO of Hypemachine, Olga previously helped run the New York office of a national tech PR firm. She has counseled and launched over 50 tech companies in the media and led public relations campaigns for early stage tech to publicly traded tech companies, billion-dollar brands, Fortune 500 companies, VC firms, and hedge funds. Previously, she was at FTI Consulting (NYSE: FCN) where she helped lead the PR efforts for Richard Branson, HSBC, Coca Cola, and Allstate.
Dani Slocki — CEO, ARTivist, Host
Dani Slocki aka SLOWKEY is the CEO / Co-Founder of vSpace focusing on accessible virtual services that connect anyone, anywhere on any device. As a Creative Director, Producer, and Host SLOWKEY can single-handedly ideate, activate and launch any idea into a dreamy reality. She’s excited to connect with more brands and producers to create magical IRL-to-URL experiences between vSpace and her recent Brooklyn venue partner Arts District.
We’re thrilled to have this group join the Huddle community and for what’s next for our Venture Partner program!
Read more at huddle.works/venture-partner.
More to come,
- Steph Golik & Mick de Meijer
→ Founders, sign up here. Have a team building your project by next week.
→ Designers + builders, apply here. Join the Huddle community, work on cool sh*t.
→ Want to be a Huddle Venture Partner? Apply to join VP2 here.
Follow @stephgolik, @iammickdemeijer, or @withhuddle on Twitter for updates. DM us to get an invite code if you don’t know a Huddle member.
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