We are working with Harpoon since 2018 when they were founded. In this article, we will share details about our collaboration: how it started, what materials we designed for them, how the partnership is going, and what they achieved with the support of our designs.
But first, here are a few pieces of info on Harpoon Ventures:
Founded in 2018, Harpoon is a venture capital firm based in San Diego, California. The firm invests in early-stage companies operating in artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomy, enterprise, fintech, security, space, and synbio sectors.
Their key differentiator is their ability to help their portfolio companies with early access to the public sector IT budget. They collaborate with prestigious partners such as Sequoia, Benchmark, and Andreessen Horowitz.
The start of our collaboration with Harpoon
In the beginning, we designed pitch decks, with whom they raised their first investment funds. With time, we became their go-to graphics partner, helping with a variety of materials, both for them (other presentations, document design, various graphics) and for the companies in their portfolio (presentations design, pitch decks, documents design).
The most recent project with them was designing materials needed for their annual investors’ meeting.
“We literally grew with them and it feels fantastic that we were there from the beginning when they were just founded and we got to see them evolve in an incredible fund, quite valuable and on an unexplored niche” – Mihai Zamfir, founder&designer Visual Hackers
Partnership goals
Services Provided: Pitch Deck Design, Document Design, Presentation Design
At first, the pitch decks designed directly for Harpoon were used to raise funds for the startup. Once the funds were raised, we started designing their documents. Having a good collaboration, Harpoon came to us also for designing the pitch decks of the companies in their portfolio.
The process
Having multiple projects with them, the process was slightly different every time. For small tasks, we received a brief/request, and knowing already their visual style we designed a material that kept the brands’ consistency.
When it came to more important projects, we established a collaborative process with the internal responsible from Harpoon, where we worked on faster iteration cycles and ideas sharing. For example, for the latest presentation, we were doing daily updates. It was to our advantage the difference in the time zone, the client being with 10h behind us. Their responsible was working in their daytime, sending us updates and requests, and by their next morning we had time to make changes.
Special requirements
We adapted to the project. We had to check before starting a project how heavily designed a presentation should have been. When they were using it for institutions and more conservative companies, we made a more simple and clean design so it didn’t look like they were overselling themselves. Other times, Harpoon, had to impress through visual impact and we had to look for more creative solutions.
Visual branding of the client
Design variants, before and after slides
Our view of the collaboration
Harpoon is one of our oldest clients and it’s a pleasure to work with them every time, as we already know each other way of communication. We got to a stage where we also know the people in the company, and we build a relationship of mutual respect. They are open to suggestions from us, they appreciate our expertise and input in projects.
Short interview with Harpoon
1. What were the main challenges or goals you faced before partnering with us?
The challenges we faced before partnering were 1) lots of time spent preparing materials, 2) low-quality design in materials, 3) inability to visualize concepts, and 4) struggling to keep up with the number of materials we needed to produce.
2. How did our services and expertise help address these challenges or achieve your goals? Can you provide specific examples or projects where our contributions were particularly valuable or noteworthy?
Your services and expertise addressed all three of the challenges we faced and have helped us scale our efforts and spend more time on our core business. We have much more confidence in being able to produce high-quality presentations and designs in no time with our partnership. This includes many weekends and overnight jobs that saved us long nights and weekend work. Some examples:
- Saving dozens of hours in preparing our fundraising presentation
- Last minute changes for our annual meeting presentation
- Helping our portfolio companies with their investor materials, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars raised
- Receiving a clear visual presentation of information that we formally struggled to convey
3. What measurable results or improvements have you observed since working with our agency?
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- Increase in turnaround time from weeks to days or hours
- Greatly improved the quality of our presentations, reports, graphics, etc.
- Reduction in time spent designing materials
4. What specific aspects of our work or service have contributed to your decision to continue working with us?
Responsiveness, quality, cost, flexibility, track record of great work
5. Have we managed to meet or exceed your expectations over the duration of our partnership? Have we managed to provide ongoing value throughout our partnership? If yes, how?
You have consistently exceeded expectations throughout our partnership – often providing great work that goes beyond what we asked for. Your team is always willing to provide new ideas and iterate many times to get something absolutely perfect after we change our minds and deliver what we need quickly.
6. Would you recommend our agency to other businesses or colleagues? If so, why?
We would 100% recommend your agencies to others – we are confident that they will receive the same great experience we have during our partnership!
It is an extraordinary pleasure to work with Harpoon, we build a strong relationship with advantages on both sides. We got to know their brand, their identity, and their expectations of graphic design and they know how we work and trust us with final presentations, saving time and resources for them.