Irene Au, formerly a design leader at internet companies including Google, Yahoo, Udacity, and Netscape, has joined venture capital firm Khosla Ventures as an operating partner, she announced in her personal blog.
Au will join Khosla Ventures next month and will assist portfolio companies in the design aspect of their organisations, helping them to recruit design talent and optimise the design of their interfaces.
The move indicates how VC firms are increasingly hiring staff with prior experience in design as well as business in order to help startups, particularly those based online, progress through enhancing their design and aesthetic features.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Lightbank have already hired design partners, as has Google Ventures, and it looks as if other corporate venturing units could well follow suit. Au oversaw Google’s user experience team at a time when four of Google Ventures’ current design partners were working under her, according to VentureBeat.
“Vinod [Khosla] and the broader team care deeply about design,” Au said. “Beyond being a competitive advantage for startups or a marketable service for potential portfolio companies, we simply want to see better design in the world, and we recognise that design needs an advocate and advisor at the highest levels of the company for it to be successful.”