A lot of early-stage problems don’t look like “design problems” at first. They look like confusion. Misalignment. A story that isn’t landing. A team shipping hard but not getting traction.
In this episode I’m joined by Kate Aronowitz, a design and product leader who’s worked at eBay, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and now supports founders from inside GV.
We talk about what portfolio support actually looks like when it’s done well. Kate describes it as a little like being an agency that gets invited in, except the incentives are completely different. She isn’t selling hours. She’s there to help founders make progress on the things that are hard to see from the inside, and hard to talk about when the stakes are high.
Kate shares what she tends to notice across companies, especially the gap between what gets reported and what’s really happening. Team dynamics, organisational friction, and the subtle ways a product story can drift until nobody can explain it simply anymore. We also touch on why brand is starting to matter more again, and what she’s seeing from teams who get it right early.
If you’re building a startup and want a more honest view of what “help” can look like beyond generic advice, this episode is a rare look behind the curtain.
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