Taking a human-centered approach to product and design is fundamental to our company creation process here at Juxtapose. From the earliest stages of concept development, our User Research and Design team leads our structured work to determine how we can transform experience: interviewing potential customers, getting feedback on prototypes, and thinking about how brand and visual identity drive end-user value. Because we have the privilege (and responsibility!) to directly create the companies we invest in, we have the unique opportunity to bring user experience to the forefront of every decision point. We consider this a big part of Juxtapose’s edge, and while always complex to get it right, we believe it creates a lot of value for our businesses and the people they serve.
Given the growth of our firm and portfolio over the past couple years, we spent the last year taking a similar approach as we reimagined the closest thing we have to an online home: our website. We decided to approach the opportunity like we would in our own company creation process. In particular, we invested real internal and external resources doing research on how the site could help us communicate to one of our primary audiences - potential founding CEO candidates - so they can better understand more about how and what we build. We also took a systematic approach to determine how to better articulate the tensions inherent in our model - that while we are a bonafide investment fund, we're not a traditional venture or private equity fund. And that while we create companies, we're not a traditional incubator or studio.
In addition to serving our key founding CEO audience, we also aspired for our website to better reflect the key pillars of our creation-oriented venture model - including concept development, user research and design, and talent - all told through the juxtaposition of art and science, with our the key input in our model (our CEOs, our founding teams, and the Juxtapose team - talent is everything!) at the center.
Finally, we wanted to accomplish all of this while showcasing some of the quirky elements of our firm’s personality that reflect our people and ethos. We commissioned an overall look and feel, along with custom illustrations, that we aimed to juxtapose our rigor with our creativity. The illustrations are metaphors of innovation and craft blending past and present, while the use of our logo’s brackets and the website’s color scheme reinforce Juxtapose being a frame (black and white) and outline to what matters most (full bleed color): our companies and CEOs.
It was fun to turn our user research and design approach on ourselves as we thought about how to thread each part of Juxtapose’s story together. Looking both internally, at our mission and personality, as well as externally, at how CEO talent and investors view Juxtapose, inspired us to tell more about our approach to company creation and what makes us different.
As our website makes its way into the world, we hope it reflects two of the most important Juxtapose principles: (1) we aspire to do few things and do them well, and (2) we truly believe that talent is everything.
