16
May 29, 2018 // 48 minutes

Megan Quinn: making design-led choices to scale with better outcomes

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Featuring
Megan Quinn

Megan Quinn

General Partner, Spark Capital
About The Episode

Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be part of fast-growing, design-led companies like Slack, Medium, or even InVision? Every team has challenges with scaling—and it turns out those challenges share many common traits when you peek behind the curtain.

In this episode, Spark Capital’s Megan Quinn talks about the common hurdles she sees across companies as they scale. She also discusses her own experiences going from the engineering-driven culture at Google to the design-driven culture at Square, and more.

Listen as Eli and Aarron chat with Megan about scaling with purpose and overcoming widespread hurdles—like how to incorporate the “why” into your product roadmap along with the “what” and “when.”

If you enjoy this episode, head over to iTunes to leave a review so other members of the design community can hear Megan’s perspective too.

Megan’s bio

As a General Partner at Spark Capital, Megan focuses on growth investments. Her specialty is in working with world-changing entrepreneurs to design, build, and scale transformative consumer products and companies. Megan has also been a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Prior to joining Spark and KPCB, Megan served as Square’s director of products, where she led strategy and development across merchant and consumer audiences. Before her tenure at Square, Megan spent seven years at Google in various leadership positions across marketing, business development, and product management. She oversaw the development and launch of some of the company’s most successful products—including Google Maps—and her team’s work continues to serve as the foundation for Google’s location-based consumer and advertising products today.

Meet Your Hosts

Aarron Walter
VP of Design Education

Aarron Walter is Director of Product on the COVID Response team at Resolve to Save Lives. Previously, he was VP of Design Education at InVision, and founded the UX practice at Mailchimp where he helped grow the product from a few thousand users to more than 10 million. He’s the author of a number of books, the latest of which is a second edition of Designing for Emotion. Aarron’s design guidance has helped the White House, the US Department of State, and dozens of major corporations, startups, and venture capital firms.

You can find Aarron on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Eli Woolery
Director of Design Education

Eli is the Director of Design Education at InVision. His design career spans both physical and digital products, and he has worked with companies ranging from startups (his own and others) to Fortune 500 companies.

In addition to his background in product and industrial design, he has been a professional photographer and filmmaker. He teaches the senior capstone class Implementation to undergraduate Product Designers at Stanford University. You can find Eli on Twitter and Medium.

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