Andy Budd
Andy Budd is an internationally renowned designer turned tech investor. He currently works as a Venture Partner for Seedcamp, one of Europe’s most successful early stage venture funds.
For those not familiar with Seedcamp, they have an enviable track record in the European tech ecosystem, having invested in the likes on Wise, Hopin, UI Path and Revolut. Andy’s role at Seedcamp is two-fold. First he’s involved in sourcing and evaluating some of the hottest start-ups in the European ecosystem. Once an investment decisions has been made, Andy helps support their portfolio company founders as they grow and mature their business.
Coming from a design and product perspective, Andy understands how design delivers competitive advantage and product market fit. As such, he pays particulate attention to the field of product led growth. Essentially helping companies build products that surpass users expectations and capitalise on network effects and viral growth.
Prior to joining Seedcamp, Andy was the founder and MD of Clearleft, arguably the UK’s first dedicated User Experience consultancy. During this time Andy worked with tech unicorns like Farfetch, Funding Circle, Mozilla and Just Eat, along with more traditional brands like Burberry, Virgin, Channel 4 and Penguin Books. It was through this work that Andy appeared on the BIMA and Wired 100 lists, as well as winning agency of the year on several occasions.
Andy Budd has played a big role in the international design community, setting up the UKs first digital design conference—dConstruct—as well at the first and longest running UX conference—UX London. His pioneering work in the field of UX design has allowed him to travel the world, speaking at conferences like AWWWards, SXSW, and The Next Web. His global input to the field of design caught the attention of Adobe, who made him a founding member of the Adobe Design Circle, a small collective of global design leaders back in 2018.
When not working at Seedcamp, Andy is a highly sort after executive coach. Andy draws partly on his experience of leading a cross function team of designers, researchers, product leaders and technologists at Clearleft. However Andy also founded a community of over 2,000 Heads, Directors and VPs of design, giving him unparalleled access and insight into the leadership practices at the worlds biggest tech companies.
SPEAKING
Andy is currently focussing his speaking activity on what business leaders can learn about innovation from the latest’s generation of fast growth tech companies. By applying an “investors mindset” when it comes to innovation, Andy hopes to encourage business leaders across the board to mimic the successes of Silicon Valley, while avoiding some of the obvious pitfalls. If you’re looking for an inspiring keynote on the topics of innovation, design, start-ups, investment, product leadership and product led growth, we can’ thin off a better speaker.
Andy Budd is a regular speaker at international conferences like SXSW, IxDA, Fronteers, Awwwards and The Next Web. Andy is constantly evolving his talks and adapting to client needs but some of his most popular talks have included –
The Accidental (Design) Leader
In a quest to understand what makes a great leader, and help his friends in newly minted leadership positions, Andy Budd started the Leading Design conference and Slack community last year. Over the past 18 months, Andy has interviewed dozens of prominent leaders and listened in on hundreds of Slack conversations about the art and craft of leadership. In this session, Andy recounts his journey into leadership, shares his successes and failures, and the important lessons he’s learned on the way. The result is a talk packed full of design leadership heuristics suitable for anybody who is a leader, wants to be a leader, or has a leader.
Building a World Class Design Team
With technology becoming a commodity, the last time Andy spoke at The Next Web, he explained how user experience was the next competitive battleground. Jump forward a couple of years and every start-up worth their series B has been investing in design; whether that’s hiring superstar designers, commissioning world-leading consultancies, or buying entire design studios. But how do you find the best talent and – more importantly – how do you keep them? In this masterclass session, Andy outlines the nine things you need to do to foster a healthy design culture, find the right talent, and build a world-class design team.
I For One Welcome Our New Robot Overlords
The world of Artificial Intellegence and Robotics is set to change the technological landscape over the coming years. In this talk Andy takes the audience through the rich history of robotics and A.I. from early automata to the latest cutting-edge research. Using past industrial revolutions and the world of science fiction as a lens, Andy looks at some of the moral, ethical, and societal challenges that face us and explores how we can create a more human-centered vision of the future.
Design as a Competitive Advantage
Design is rapidly becoming the hot new business trend, as companies large and small realise the benefits design can bring to their bottom line. However it’s not quite as simple as hiring a bunch of designers and expecting them to thrive. Bringing design into your organisation requires understanding, effort, and a commitment to change. In this talk Andy Budd explains how you can take full advantage of the opportunities design has to offer before your competitors do the same.
Some of his other talks have included “Designs Midlife Crisis”, “ The Business Value of Design” and The 5 Dysfunctions of A Design Team”
