This week, global venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates announced the launch of NEA Studio, a 12-week program for designers founding mobile and web startups in New York, with Liz Danzico, Chair, as mentor for the program. In Fast Co.Design’s words, “the program will bring roughly five designers into a stipended work space in Union Square, and over 12 weeks, these designers will have a chance to actualize their ideas under the guidance of designer mentors and NEA’s own investors. It’s basically a crash course in building a product and becoming an entrepreneur, all in one.”
Designer-founders will work alongside NEA investors and a diverse team of experts from the design, startup, and NEA portfolio communities including MFA Interaction Design chair and co-founder, Liz Danzico; Jill Nussbaum, MFA Interaction Design faculty, and Executive Director of Product and Interaction Design at the Barbarian Group; IDEO founder David Kelley and New York Location Director Albert Lee; and Adi Tartarko, founder and CEO of Houzz. From the press release:
“Creating an amazing user experience is both art and science, and design plays a more important role than ever in developing a product—especially mobile and Internet applications,” said Dayna Grayson, Partner at NEA. “More and more designers are founding companies—it’s no longer the exclusive purview of technologists and business entrepreneurs. This is something we’d like to see more of in the market, and founding NEA Studio allows us to actively and directly support designer founders as they move to the next stage.”
Applications to the 12-week program are being accepted through March 31, 2013. The program kicks off April 30, 2013.
Read more at GigaOM, Fast Co.Design, or in the press release, and apply here.
