Inside Google Ventures' Open Source Product Design Process

First time accepted submitter smaxp writes "Google Ventures is blazing a new trail for venture investors, delivering advice and services to its portfolio companies with in-house teams of experts in the fields of design, marketing, recruiting and engineering. I had a fascinating discussion with Google Ventures design partner Jake Knapp about how he and his four design partners help Google Ventures portfolio companies design better products and better businesses."

high-tech!

[schneidafunk]

Apparently the trick is to have post-it notes and colored stickers, based on the images in the articles

Re:

[auric_dude]

What is Google Wave? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo [youtube.com]

open source the work

[Anonymous Coward]

privatize the profits

Generic business plan

[Animats]

The generic business plan of Google [retailmenot.com] Ventures [adelphic.com] companies [docusign.com], based on their privacy policies, seems to be

• Give away service for cheap or free
• Ram anal probe up user's ass and collect data
• Spam with ads.

Even their thermostat [nest.com] phones home and sends data about when you're home to a server.

Re:

[AndyAndyAndyAndy]

Modded "insightful" but not really sure what the insight is. It's a pretty established business plan for data companies. It smells like a criticism with the anal probe hyperbole, but not really sure what the point is.

Re:

[TeknoHog]

Google: putting the 'anal' in 'analysis' since 1998.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Modded "insightful" but not really sure what the insight is. It's a pretty established business plan for data companies. It smells like a criticism with the anal probe hyperbole, but not really sure what the point is.

Not sure what the point is, huh? Let me introduce...

Re:

[Nerdfest]

The point is the usual anti-Google FUD. In general, their a pretty well behaved company, and are exceptional compared to their competition. It's to the point though that even the non-paid are spreading the FUD. I'm not sure if it's that people hate to see companies doing well, or if they expect there to be no cost to internet services. I've been pretty impressed by Google's behaviour for the most part and I'd hate to see it get to the point that they behave as badly as their competition as they get criti

Google will own us all LOL

[CaseyGirl007]

It's a matter of time until Google owns everything. I long ago gave up the idea of privacy. On a side note, anyone care to see my new site I've been working on? I know probably not all that great to what you guys might be able to do, but give a chick a high 5 for effort! http://ventura-computer-repair.com/ [ventura-co...repair.com]