Redesigning Arkam Ventures
Arkam is a complete website redesign that gives the venture firm a clearer, more structured digital platform.
Arkam Ventures is growing fast, but their old website looked dated and didn't match their actual footprint. It was confusing for founders — their primary users — and failed to project the sophistication a top-tier VC firm needs. My job was to align their digital presence with their standing.
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The Problem
I broke the core issues down to four main friction points:
Confusing Investment Thesis
Founders couldn't grasp Arkam's specific investment focus, which led to a lot of mismatched startup pitches. I identified this by talking directly to founders about how they perceived Arkam's focus, speaking with Partners to understand their actual thesis, and requesting inbound distribution metrics.
Weak Brand Perception
The old visual language looked outdated and didn't reflect the firm's actual credibility or market standing. I assessed this by looking at how Arkam's credibility showed up in the real world — track record, partner reputations, portfolio quality. Market authority demands visual authority; established brands can't afford to look inexperienced.
Messy Navigation
A cluttered layout made essential pages — portfolio companies, team profiles, and insights — hard to locate.
Lack of Trust
There was no social proof. The site had no founder stories or portfolio impact data to build immediate credibility. In a relationship-driven space like venture capital, founder stories and impact data are what build trust.
Strategy & Team Alignment
Before kicking off production, I had to get the leadership team aligned on a major conflict: the partners wanted a super clean, minimalist look, while the business needed to host a lot of dense investment data.
To bridge this gap, I pitched a progressive disclosure framework:
Keep the surface clean
Top-level pages stay incredibly clean and airy, satisfying the partners' design vision.
Build depth underneath
An intuitive, modular path sits below the surface for the users who actually need to dive into the data.
Phase 1 — Structuring the System
We started with high-fidelity wireframes to nail down the core layout and user journey.
The Goal: define the information hierarchy and spatial pacing early.
The Outcome: by keeping color and branding out of the conversation during the structural phase, I kept stakeholders focused purely on content priority. That made sure the system could handle long-term fund growth without cluttering the interface.
Phase 2 — Leading the Visual Pivot
The visual direction required managing a major strategic pivot with the executive team. For the first iteration, I pushed a bold, dark-themed concept with sharp gradients to give them a hyper-modern edge.
The Feedback: when I presented it to the partners, it was an immediate miss. They felt the dark theme looked too aggressive for their positioning and wanted something lighter and more classic — something that projected warmth and stability.
The Pivot: I reframed the direction based on that feedback and developed a few distinct visual concepts using lighter palettes and cleaner grids.
The Alignment: we ran a session to debate the trade-offs of each approach and finally locked in a direction that felt premium but authoritative. From there I scaled the entire UI into a modular component system, so everything from team bios to portfolio cards was completely repeatable.
The Impact
Operational Freedom
Once the site was live, I knew the marketing team would need to make regular updates without a technical background. I worked with the developers to build a set of reusable components so marketing could manage changes on their own — eliminating the constant back-and-forth and speeding up post-launch content updates by 60%.
Repositioning
We completely transformed how the firm is perceived online, giving them an institutional-grade presence that commands respect from founders and corporate partners alike.
Key Takeaway
Minimalism is organisation, not omission
Designing for finance proves that minimalism isn't about hiding content just to save white space — it's about organising complexity. A great UI should act as a filter, letting users find heavy data points easily without making the page feel heavy.