Frank Thelen
Innovation is the
core of my DNA
A multi-property design system for a deep-tech investor and his venture studio – one ecosystem, two voices.
Client
Competitors
My Role
Lead Product Designer – systemdesign, IA, art direction
Industry
Venture capital · Deep tech · Personal branding
Deliverables
Multi-site design system, IA, prototypes, design hand-off
Frank Thelen is a European serial founder, deep-tech investor, and TV presenter. His venture studio, Freigeist (e42), has backed companies such as Lilium Aviation, Wunderlist, myTaxi, Ankerkraut, kaufDA, and Little Lunch. The brief covered two properties – frank.io and freigeist.com – that needed to look like one ecosystem without sounding like the same person. The challenge was system design, not page design: investors, founders, and media each needed a different reading of the same brand, and every change to one site would ripple through the other unless the underlying system held them together.
Keywords:
– Multi-property system
– Design system
– Information architecture
– Brand-meets-product
– Venture capital
– Strategic positioning
The challenge
Two distinct audiences (founders for Freigeist; investors and partners for frank.io), one ecosystem. The pre-existing sites had drifted into different visual systems and content models – duplicating components, fragmenting the brand, and making it expensive to update either property. The work was to define a shared system, with explicit places where each property could diverge in voice without breaking the visual contract.
My Role
I led the redesign across both properties – UX audit, IA, prototyping, design system, and design hand- off – partnering with Frank’s team and the development team to build something they could maintain on their own.
– Ran a UX audit of both properties and benchmarked against Sequoia, a16z, and Cherry Ventures to define what “investor-grade” looked like in 2023.
– Designed a modular design system shared between frank.io and freigeist.com, with clear rules for where each property diverged.
– Architected the investor-journey timeline as the spine of frank.io – the section that drove the 10×page-views growth.
– Defined a Figma component library and design tokens that the engineering team could maintain post-launch.
– Drove cross-functional alignment with the team to define success metrics before design started.
– Led the design hand-off through Figma Dev Mode with written guidelines and design reviews of finished pages.
Impact
“Personal branding sounds like a content problem — it’s actually a system problem. If your two properties don’t share primitives, every campaign costs twice as much.”
Key Screens
frank.io — investor site
- Investor-journey timeline (10× growth driver)
- Portfolio companies with case-study cards
- Press & media block
- Partner enquiry CTA with qualifying form
Goal: Position Frank as a strategic deep-tech investor.
freigeist.com — venture studio
- Founder-focused IA and onboarding
- Portfolio + thesis content
- Application flow tuned for serious founders
- Shared system, founder-first voice
Goal: Speak to founders without losing the brand.
Process
UX audit & benchmarking
Audited both sites for IA, content overlap, and component drift. Benchmarked against Sequoia, a16z, and Cherry Ventures to identify the patterns the audience expected.
Research
Interviewed the team and target users (founders, partners, media). Mapped the user scenarios and surfaced the gaps the existing sites couldn’t serve.
System design
Built the modular design system: shared primitives, divergence rules, and a clear component library. Defined the Figma Dev Mode hand-off so engineering owned the same source of truth.
Prototyping & iteration
Figma prototypes for every key screen, iterative reviews, and usability testing on the final layouts. Mobile adaptation as a system, not an afterthought.
Outcome & Reflection
The result is a unified visual ecosystem that conveys the expertise, technological focus, and ambition of both Frank Thelen and Freigeist – and a design system that the team can extend without breaking the brand. The investor-journey section alone drove a 10× growth in page views. What this project crystallised: when two properties share an audience, treating them as one system isn’t a constraint – it’s leverage.
