Allen Lawson

I'm a designer because I have a passion for creating. When I was little, the creating was with Lego's and building blocks. Eventually the creating turned into video animation and drawing. I later taught myself how to code and began creating digitally.

Throughout high school I freelanced in my free time, picking up random design gigs. Toward the end of my senior year, I decided that I wouldn't take the traditional route of college. Two weeks after graduating high school, I received an offer to join my first startup, Vulcun. I accepted the offer on a Tuesday and moved to San Francisco the following Saturday, 2200 miles away from home.

That was over three years ago. In the time since, I've worked at a number of early stage startups and in 2016 I became the Designer in Residence for Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, a notable VC firm in the Valley. For me, being a designer means that I'm continually learning, on my own and from those around me, and continually experimenting with what I can create.

There's always been a common theme throughout my work: designing products for people who traditionally haven't had the right tools to do their job effectively.

At Ironclad, that meant designing software for legal teams so they can automate their busy work and do their real work.

At Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, that meant giving partners of the firm powerful data insight tools to improve their deal flow.

At Remix, that meant helping the team knock out a backlog of features so that urban planners can interact with the data they need to plan their cities.

At DoorDash, that meant designing desktop and mobile experiences that make it easy for anyone, anywhere to order food.