"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late" R.H.

πŸ‘‹ Hi, I’m Philip Sebastian.
Designer. Investor. Outlier.

πŸ“ San Francisco

SCROLLΒ DOWN

10+ yrs

experience

150+

Projects

120k+

Design Hours

200+

INVESTOR REJECTIONS

$500k

FUndraised

5x

Accelerator alum
Recognition / Experience / Alumni

Featured Work

‍imgur β†—
‍
The largest place to discover viral images and memes.
Sr. Designer
I joined Imgur in 2017 where I helped design the logo(4.7B daily views), mobile/web app. Words cannot describe the blood, sweat, tears and hundred illustrations &Β wire-framing that went into this project. I also designed ad blocks to increase revenue for the company.
‍Manhattan Venture Partners β†—
‍
Shaping the Future of Private Company Liquidity.
Design Lead & Entrepreneur In Residence
‍
As an Entrepreneur Design in Residence, I collaborate with teams to create efficient workflows and user-friendly internal tools, boosting productivity and efficiency. By applying design thinking and utilizing platforms like Salesforce, Zapier, and Wealthblock, and drive success within the venture capital firm.
‍Build by SAP β†—
‍
No-code prototype tool for enterprise.
Sr. User Experience Designer
Developed the first no-code prototype builder for enterprise clients, including research, information architecture reorganization, A/B testing, and introducing a four-pane interface. Successfully launched the first cloud-based tool for rapid enterprise software prototyping.
‍Calm β†—
‍
Largest meditation, sleep and relaxation app.
Designing a New Shopping Experience
Pre-unicorn days: I met with Alex Tew (the CEO at Calm) and we brainstormed together some ideas around a new shopping experience. The goal was to keep things simple, intuitive and consistent with the brand.
‍Bankroll β†’
‍
Helping teenagers learn about good spending habits.
CEO & Founder
Make Early Key Hires, Find novel ways to move quickly (or shatter) existing obstacles for growth and adoption. R&D, Product/Engineering Management, Design, MVP, Fundraise.

Past Experience

Product, Design, Manager, Mentor, Founder, Advisor, Hacker
Design Lead & Co-Founder, MeetRobin.AI
πŸŽ–οΈ Founder Fellowship, OnDeck (ODF20)
πŸŽ–οΈ Founder Residency, Antler Ventures (ATX5 Finalist)
πŸ₯‡ Designer/Hacker, Genzr App, Antler Ventures (Hackathon)
πŸŽ–οΈ Fellowship, Build Space (S4)
πŸŽ–οΈ Graduate + Moderator, YCombinator (Startup School)
Designer & Entrepreneur In Residence, Manhattan Venture Partners
Design Lead & Co-Founder, BetterBelly (BetterBelly Inc.)
Co-Founder & CEO, Bankroll (pivoted)
Co-Founder & CEO, RecurPal (Gattaka Inc.)
Sr. Designer, Imgur
Sr. Designer, Apple Inc., Cupertino CA.
Designer & Co-Founder, Motown Music (TwoUniverse Inc.)
Sr. User Experience Designer, SAP
User Experience Designer, Fanhattan
Advisor & Mentor at Adplist.org

Design & UX Process

‍‍Empathetic Discovery Phase: Market research, Competitive analysis, Conduct interviews, Competitor reviews, User Research + Survey Metrics, User Stories, User Flows, Personas, and scenarios, Record and Analyze each session.
‍
Define & Ideate: Feature Matrix, Brainstorm, communicate structure, information architecture and navigation design.
‍
Prototype: Wireframes and rough prototypes. Find feasibility with engineers and the team. Rinse & Repeat.
‍
Test & Repeat: Visual, interface and interaction design. Rinse & Repeat. Functional specs and production design.
Test: Evaluate, Analytics, Rinse & Repeat.

Professional Interests

πŸŽ™ Podcasts related to Innovation + Product design

🌱 Mentoring next-gen designers

πŸ™Š Mastering design critiques

πŸ“ Measuring UX team impact

βš›οΈ Atomic design systems

πŸ“ Content Strategy

❓ Survey design (yeah its a thing)

Education

πŸŽ“ B.F.A. in Computer Arts New Media & Psychology
SF State University & Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA

πŸ… Design Thinking + LaunchPad
(Accelerator Program)
‍Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

πŸŽ– Certificate of Completion
β€’ User Experience Interaction Design
β€’ UX+Interaction Design - Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.
‍

Values

Think Different
Stay Curious
Work Hard
Fail Often
Respect
Believe

Team

Team Culture
Design Feedback
Design Sprints
Mentorship
Agility
Collaboration
Management

Tools

Figma
Code Pen
CS6
GitHub/GitLab
MailerLite
Webflow
Slack
Font Labs
Wealthblock.ai
Discord

Skills

πŸ’° Venture Capital
⚑️ Founder
🀠 Leadership
πŸ“ Product Management
πŸš€ User Experience Design
πŸ‘₯ User Research
πŸš— Usability Testing
πŸ•΅οΈβ€β™‚οΈ Contextual Inquiries
πŸ§ͺ Heuristic Evaluation
πŸ“ Content Strategy
πŸ’° Fundraising
πŸ‘« Customer Interviews
πŸ›  Prototyping
πŸ“Š Business Development
🎨 Visual Design
🌏 Universal Design

Lately...

Recently, I finished a 7-week founder residency program with Antler Ventures in Austin, Texas, where I co-built and scaled a product called Genzr with my co-founder, Ambar Shrivastava. Genzr aimed to bridge communication between generations, assisting individuals in various tasks such as finding jobs and helping employers better understand candidates.

Additionally, I completed a fellowship at OnDeck (ODF20), where I collaborated with fellow founders to develop products addressing market needs, including my own venture, meetrobin.ai. I'm committed to supporting entrepreneurs in realizing their ideas, from building MVPs to successful launches. This journey has deepened my understanding of product development and reinforced my dedication to innovation and tackling real-world challenges.

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me...

1. Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started.
2. Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry about what people think in the short term, which will get easier over time.
3. It is easier for a team to do a hard thing that really matters than to do an easy thing that doesn’t really matter; audacious ideas motivate people.
4. Incentives are superpowers; set them carefully.
5. Concentrate your resources on a small number of high-conviction bets; this is easy to say but evidently hard to do. You can delete more stuff than you think.
6. Communicate clearly and concisely.
7. Fight bullshit and bureaucracy every time you see it and get other people to fight it too. Do not let the org chart get in the way of people working productively together.
8. Outcomes are what count; don’t let good process excuse bad results.
9. Spend more time recruiting good people. Take risks on high-potential people with a fast rate of improvement. Look for evidence of getting stuff done in addition to intelligence.
10. Superstars are even more valuable than they seem, but you have to evaluate people on their net impact on the performance of the organization.
11. Fast iteration can make up for a lot; it’s usually ok to be wrong if you iterate quickly. Plans should be measured in decades, execution should be measured in weeks.
12. Don’t fight the business equivalent of the laws of physics.
13. Inspiration is perishable and life goes by fast. Inaction is a particularly insidious type of risk.
14. Scale often has surprising emergent properties.
15. Compounding exponentials are magic. In particular, you really want to build a business that gets a compounding advantage with scale.
16. Get back up and keep going.
17. Working with great people is one of the best parts of life!