Hi, I’m Felix Haas, a designer, founder and investor working at the intersection of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence.

I was one of the first designers at Lovable, where I now help lead our design team.

And I’m a Scout investor at Sequoia Capital.

I care deeply about what we build, and how we build it.

Over the past decade, I’ve founded my own companies and shaped the products and brands of some of Europe’s most exciting start-ups.

I also built a design studio that was acquired in 2024.

These days, I divide my time between London, Stockholm and New York.

This is my story so far, and the story of the people who shaped it.

Early life and education

I was born in 1998 in Düsseldorf, Germany. My parents ran a fashion business, so I grew up around collections, galleries and art fairs, and I think that’s where I first learned to look closely at form and detail.

I fell in love with building things while I was still at school and taught myself to design and develop my own consumer apps. After studying business and management at the Technical University of Munich, I went to Harvard University to study business and design. A year later, I left: I couldn’t wait any longer to build products of my own.

Career

Skip App

At eighteen, I founded my first company, Skip App, an instant photo-sharing app that let you send pictures to the people around you in the moment. I designed and built it myself, raised a pre-seed round from angel investors in Munich and Los Angeles, and moved to Palo Alto in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The app launched on the App Store in early 2018, and the company closed later that year. It didn’t become what I’d hoped, but looking back, it’s the reason I became a designer.

Mapify

In the Bay Area, I met Patrick Haede, co-founder of the travel platform Mapify. He became one of my closest collaborators, and still is. I joined Mapify as its founding designer and later became head of design, shaping the product end to end.

Apple featured the app on the App Store several times, and from 2019 it came preinstalled on devices in Apple Stores. Mapify raised more than $3 million in venture capital and was acquired by HomeToGo in 2021.

Gorillas and independent practice

My work at Mapify opened the door to a series of early-stage companies. In October 2020, at twenty-two, I became the first designer at Gorillas, the Berlin grocery-delivery start-up that grew into one of the fastest-growing companies in European history. Working side by side with the founders, I designed its first app and laid the foundations of its brand.

I was also the first designer at Arive, and over time I became a design partner to early-stage and hyper-growth companies.

At some point, Business Insider even called me one of the most sought-after designers in the European start-up scene.

Creandum and Blossom Design

In January 2022, the venture capital firm Creandum invited me to become one of its first Designers in Residence. I worked alongside the investment team and helped portfolio companies with product design and design hiring.

Later that year, Johanna Weber and I founded Blossom Design, a product and brand studio, so we could partner with more companies at once. Sonic acquired the studio in September 2024.

Lovable

After a period in Paris, where I advised and invested in start-ups, I met the founders of Lovable at an event in London. I believed in what they were building and invested in the company.

In March 2025, I joined Lovable as one of its first designers. Today I help lead our design team at a company growing at a pace few in the history of software have matched, and I feel lucky to be part of it.

Investing

Alongside my design work, I’ve backed more than 30 start-ups as an angel investor, and since 2025 I’ve been a Scout for Sequoia Capital. Together with Patrick Haede, I host Quick Coffee, a podcast and investment vehicle. Being there for founders early is one of my favourite parts of the work.

Writing and speaking

In my newsletter, I write about interface design, artificial intelligence and start-ups, and writing is how I make sense of what I see. My essays include “Kind Products Win” (2025) and “Invisible Interfaces” (2026).

I speak regularly at conferences and give guest lectures around the world, including at Slush, TechCrunch and Founders Forum.

Personal projects

Alongside my work, I pursue personal projects. The first is Letters from Felix: letters to people who have inspired me, because I believe we don’t tell people often enough what they’ve meant to us.

Haas Foundation

Together with my sister Hanna Haas, I’m one of the managing directors of the Haas Foundation, our family-run foundation. We’ll share our first projects soon.

Design philosophy and influences

My work is guided by reduction: I believe a design is complete when there’s nothing left to take away. As AI makes software ever easier to produce, the value of design lies less in execution than in intention, in deciding what deserves to be built and building it with care. To me, our job as designers is to make AI usable, trustworthy and human.

Kindness is a theme I keep coming back to. After a decade in which design was devoted to efficiency, I want technology that is not only powerful but kind. I also write about interfaces that recede, about a future in which we talk to AI agents and design moves to the moments of trust and approval.

Few people shaped me as much as my grandmother, Ilse Haas. We were very close. She was an icon of fashion and design, and she began collecting art early in life.

As a child, I went with her to openings. She would tell me what she liked and show me what to pay attention to, and somewhere along the way I found my own taste. I still see her in my work today. She is a great inspiration to me, and I’m deeply grateful to her.

Thank you

A big thank you to everyone who has supported me, believed in me and taught me along the way. I couldn’t have done any of this without you, and I’m forever grateful.

Anna BeckerJonas WagnerSofia LindqvistDaniel OkaforClara MoreauMaximilian RothElena PetrovaLukas BrandtAmara MensahHenrik LarsenJulia HartmannTomás SilvaMia SchneiderNoah FischerLea KrügerOskar NilssonYara HaddadPaul ZimmermannInês DuarteLeon Hofmann