Beginner Bank

Product Design Financing

396 followers

Product Design Financing

396 followers

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BeginnerBank.com helps early-stage startups get product-led growth by lowering the up-front cost of principal product design. Apply now and finance up to 75%, put 2% down, and pay the balance over 5 months (max).

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Launch tags:Tech•Finance•Design

Launch Team

Anima Playground — AI with an Eye for Design

AI with an Eye for Design

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Beginner Bank

Maker

Hello PH community - Erik here, announcing https://BeginnerBank.com. If you're a developer or founder, you may have design talent on your team already or you don't. We're here for those who don't and know they need it for product-led growth. You can find design everywhere. And there are countless design tools anyone can use. But you can't always find good designers, especially a team of principal product designers who are: 1) available, and 2) affordable So you end up shipping something people need but don't quite want because you have't dialed in its desirability. And to get that, you may just need principal product design. We can help. But first, a little background: In January, 2022, Ethos acquired the Tomorrow app I co-founded. Since then, I've been working with Joshua Martens (Tomorrow's design lead) to test this hypothesis with 1 paying customer: Would early-stage companies get more product-led growth if they could finance principal product design? For the last 10 months, we have been principal product designers for Highnote.com helping them ship Highnote v1.0+. Highnote financed 50% of principal product design and got product-led growth with 2 paying distribution deals just 4 months after launching Highnote v1.0. It worked. So Josh and I decided to partner and create Beginner Bank. Today, we're launching https://beginnerbank.com and showcasing the Highnote case study on https://beginnerbank.com/case-st... We want to help early-stage startups finance up to 75% of principal product design (using Y Combinator's SAFE note). The investment is in place of our deferred services revenue. This makes Beginner Bank’s financing offer founder-friendly and VC-approved. Special thanks to Paul Weinstein, General Partner at Azure Capital for insights. If you like this idea, thanks in advance for upvoting Beginner Bank on Product Hunt today. If you’d like to weigh in, we have a handful of questions for the PH community... 1. If you’re a developer/founder, is a partnership with Beginner Bank for principal product design interesting? 2. If you’re a designer, would you like to work with Beginner Bank on products for cash + equity? 3. If you’re an animator, we’re hiring, send an email with your links to: jobs@beginnerbank.com 4. Do you think BeginnerBank.com could/should expand into a marketplace to enable even more product-led growth? Thanks! - Erik & Joshua P.S. We have strong opinions, loosely held so we appreciate and value all feedback.

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3yr ago

@erikb Congrats on the launch 🚀

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@1mirul thanks!

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@1mirul thank you!

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@1mirul thanks - it's been a long day, got a few hours of sleep!

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@zara34 much appreciated

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3yr ago

Audio Writer iOS

Totally love this idea and concept - trying to blend Agency X Financing biz

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@pradeeb28 thanks and well said.

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3yr ago

Audio Writer iOS

@erikb is it both debt n equity based financing?

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@pradeeb28 it's a convertible note, but we use Y Combinator's SAFE documents for financing, so it's not debt. It converts to equity if and when the company raises new money in an equity round.

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3yr ago

Audio Writer iOS

@erikb curious to know how do you see this model fit between Incubators and Accelerators? (from founder point of view). Do you see them as a direct or indirect competitors?

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@pradeeb28 Good question. Definitely not competitors. We're 100% focused on using design to drive product-led growth. We view incubators/accelerators as partners and if they want companies in their cohorts to grow, we can help.

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3yr ago

OneCal

@erikb the idea seems very interesting (also risky). Wish you luck mate 🙌 The case study showcased on the website is very sleek btw, good job 😁💯

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@eraldo_forgoli Thank you Eraldo. Yes, risk. But also reward on the flip side of that coin if we get to make big bets on winning founders.

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3yr ago

No Code Hero

Congrats! So you take booth money and equity. How many equity you take?

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@haserk Many incubators take single-digit percentages of equity for the services they offer. We do the math a little differently, since not all companies need the same solution. We show transparent market rates for principal product design and let companies decide how much they want financed, from 25-75%. The financed amount determines the equity percentage we get in the future using a convertible note or SAFE. For example, if you requested 50% financing of $288,000 total, the amount we'd invest would be $144,000. If the SAFE converts into your next equity round at a $7.5 million valuation, it might be worth 1.92%. We invest our deferred revenue because we believe the equity will be worth more one day.

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3yr ago

No Code Hero

@erikb I see, thanks. And what do you call “principal product design”? Can you explain it for me, please?

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@haserk Sure thing. By principal, I mean a senior designer who can design a product zero to one, taking the lead on inventing a holistic solution to a problem.

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3yr ago

Fire Hunt

Is the visual design even important for 1.0?

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3yr ago

Beginner Bank

Maker

@sungho Great question, Sungho! I'm personally a big believer that a compelling new v1.0 product is possible (technically), viable (business model), and desirable (design). We think companies should validate the feasibility much earlier by shipping a v0.5 lo-fi private alpha as soon as it solves a problem for end-users. Hopefully the scope of features at the start is sufficiently small so you have cycles to iterate up to mid-fi, then eventually high-fidelity designs, so that your launch product is something people need and want. Without the want, customer acquisition can stall as the product faces its biggest completion: inertia. Desirability motivates people to act.

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3yr ago