Jake Knapp (Author) Jake is a designer and facilitator. He created Google Ventures' sprint process and has run over 100 sprints with startups like Medium, Nest, AngelList and Flatiron Health. He's presented his process to business students at Stanford, UC-Berkeley and Columbia University. Previously, Jake was a design vigilante at Google, leading sprints for everything from Gmail to Google X to Chrome. Jake also started a '20% project' that became Google Hangouts. Long ago, Jake grew up on a rural island in Washington State, began his design career at Oakley and led product design on Microsoft Encarta. He is currently one of the world's tallest designers. John Zeratsky (Author) John is a designer and writer who has worked on consumer, enterprise and medical software products.
He worked on the YouTube redesign in 2011 and helped create FeedBurner, which Google acquired in 2007. At Google Ventures, John has spent the last four years mastering how startups use design successfully. He's personally worked with more than 50 companies, including Pocket, Blue Bottle Coffee, RetailMeNot and Foundation Medicine. His focus is on using design to validate business assumptions like market opportunity, value proposition, marketing strategy and new product adoption. Previously, John ran a small design agency, designed a daily newspaper, and taught sailing. He studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin. He lives in San Francisco with his wife. Braden Kowitz (Author) Braden is a designer, prototyper and storyteller.
He founded Google Ventures' design team in 2009 and pioneered the role of 'design partner' at a VC firm. He has worked with close to 200 startups, providing hands-on design support from interaction design, to hiring, to team culture. Before joining Google Ventures, Braden led design for several Google products, including Gmail, Google Apps for Business, Google Spreadsheets and Google Trends. Braden started his career building virtual reality simulators at the Beckman Institute and interactive visualisations at Lucent Technologies. Braden studied Computer Science at the University of Illinois and Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon.