Announcing IDEO’s Product Validation Day for DeFi Founders
At a time when the global economy and financial system face unprecedented strain, there is a small but rapidly growing ecosystem building a future where individuals around the world will not only have the ability to “be your own bank,” but also to create and access any imaginable financial asset, at globally available rates, with a tap on your phone.
This future is being built by a corner of the crypto ecosystem commonly referred to as Decentralized Finance, or “DeFi.” In DeFi, protocols such as Maker, Compound, Synthetix, and Uniswap act as “money legos”, providing users with the ability to openly borrow, lend, create, and exchange assets. These money legos can be combined to create new products and protocols, such as PoolTogether’s prize-linked savings protocol or InstaDApp’s one-click loan refinancing.
To help early stage DeFi teams accelerate to product-protocol-market fit, we’re excited to announce a virtual edition of a program we’ve run previously with some of the top crypto and DeFi teams in the world, including Compound, 0x, dYdX, Dharma, PoolTogether, UMA, Lightning Labs, River Financial, Celo, Celer, Optimism, MyCrypto, DappHero, DeFiZap, and many more.
On June 18–19th, 2020, IDEO CoLab Ventures will be hosting a virtual Product Validation Day to help DeFi founders from around the world determine whether to pursue, pivot, or kill new product concepts. IDEO will lead early-stage teams through a design research sprint, where they’ll talk to real end users and collaborate with peers, experts, and mentors in the DeFi community.
The following morning, participants will have the opportunity to spend a half day meeting and talking to the teams and founders who are defining today’s DeFi space.
If you’re an early-stage DeFi founder who is pre-launch or recently post-launch, apply to join Product Validation Day here by Sunday, May 31st at 11:59pm PT.
If the numerous hacks, exploits, and typos we’ve seen in DeFi taught us one thing, it’s this: building dependably for DeFi is hard. While our industry relies on speed and composability, founders are repeatedly learning lessons about what’s required to build products and protocols that deal with millions of dollars in assets. That’s why IDEO CoLab Ventures will be inviting select teams who join us for Product Validation Day to continue working with us through a DeFi Residency — the world’s best place for founders to launch a DeFi company.
Over the past few years, we’ve worked with people, projects, and protocols that are defining DeFi. Through this work we’ve been able to track adoption, spot emerging patterns, help ship unique products, and create new frameworks to get better DeFi products and protocols to market, faster. And we’ve learned that DeFi founders significantly benefit from specialized support in DeFi-specific areas ranging from access to security experts and auditors, to attracting early liquidity and designing for governance, which we will be wrapping into our DeFi Residency program.
There are so many exciting possibilities in DeFi, but none of them matter without one thing: a product people want. So, if you want to be at the cutting edge of building a more open, accessible, and resilient financial system, apply by 11:59pm PT on May 31st to participate in Product Validation Day.
We can’t wait to see you there.
