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.

Erik Kjell

Beginner Bank

Maker

3yr ago

Florence Zara

@erikb Congrats on the launch!

Fares

@erikb Congrats on the launch 🚀

@1mirul thanks!

@1mirul thank you!

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

deepu

Audio Writer iOS

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

@pradeeb28 thanks and well said.

@erikb is it both debt n equity based financing?

@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.

@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?

@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.