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Thoughtful and high-quality product design is no longer optional. Gone are the days that a startup could launch with a bare-bones app or website. The demand side of the design equation has only grown — consumers are used to beautiful, intuitive products — while the supply side is struggling to keep up.

How are startups supposed to educate themselves in product design, hire the right people for those positions and think about product design as a core piece of their business?

A good starting point is an upcoming TC Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising session with Scott Tong on July 8 & 9.

Tong was a principal designer at IDEO, a co-founder at IFTTT, head of product design at Pinterest, an EIR at IMO Ventures and is now a startup advisor at Design Fund.

When it comes to thoughtfully crafting products, and ensuring that those designs fit in line with the company’s broader short and long-term goals, there is perhaps no one better suited to show us how it’s done.

Tong joins a long list of experts in a variety of startup core competencies who will be speaking at TC Early Stage in July. That list includes Sequoia’s Mike Vernal (Product Market Fit Is All About Tempo), Coatue’s Caryn Marooney (formerly Facebook’s head of comms) and Superhuman’s Rahul Vohra (Growth Hacking). You can check out the agenda here.

The coolest part of TC Early Stage is that all sessions are designed with plenty of time for audience Q&A, so founders can get specific, tailored advice about their own business challenges.

These mini-bootcamps kick off in just two weeks so we hope you’ll be joining us at TC Early Stage— Grab your ticket here!