UX Fund: Investing In Companies Which Strong Design Principles

Geoff Teehan and Jon Lax, founding partners of Teehan+Lax, a Toronto company specialising in user experience design, setup a UX Fund in 2006.

The fund was comprised of 10 companies that deliver great user experiences, and included Apple, Google, Netflix, Research In Motion and Yahoo!. An investment of $50,000 USD was made across the 10 companies with a view to selling after one year.


After one year the UX Fund matured 39.3%, outperforming NASDAQ, S&P 500 andNYSE*, while after four and a half years the UX Fund matured 101.8%.


The criteria for the fund is outlined on the company's blog**:

Every company in our fund was chosen because of the user experience they provide. Here is specifically what we looked for:

1. A demonstrated care in the design of their products and Web site
2. A history of innovation
3. They inspire loyalty in their customer base
4. Doing business with them is a positive experience

The United Kingdom Design Council are cited as inspiration for the UX Fund, after creating a Design Index and tracking the performance of design-led companies in the UK between 1995-2004***:

We’ve tracked the share prices of the biggest hitters in corporate Britain and the evidence is unequivocal: Design-led companies have produced dramatically better share-price performance for their investors, not just for a few weeks or months but consistently over a solid decade ... their share prices have outrun key stock market indices by a full 200 per cent.

Check out more here: 
http://teehanlax.com/uxfund
* http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/20...
** http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/20...
*** http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/... [PDF]

Credit to Andrew McManus on Quora