Learn, connect, and level up with the best designers in tech
Join a trusted community of design leaders
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A community to fall back upon whenever you need
Meaningful connections with peers, mentors and future collaborators
Blow off steam whenever you need
Navigate your career supported by intimate masterminds with trusted peers
Regular check-ins
First-hand advice
Meaningful connections
Accelerate your career through specialized tracks led by the best in the industry
Design Management
- Operating your team
- Defining strategy
- Performance management
- Recruiting & hiring
- Building your management portfolio
First Designer
- Picking the right team to join
- Crafting the processes and culture from 0 to 1
- Scaling the team
- Influencing strategy
- Operating your team
Continuously level up and gain confidence with weekly Learning Sessions
Practical learning opportunities
High-signal sessions with industry’s best
Ever-growing library of content
Everything you need to accelerate your career, for years to come
Application Process
4-Week Onboarding
Life-long Community
Apply to On Deck Design
Payment plans available.
MEET THE TEAM
Designed and led by top operators
What does a typical month at ODD look like?
October
TESTIMONIALS
Here’s what other Fellows have been saying about their ODD experience
ODD is a community with a diverse background and a growth mindset. People come together to uplift each other with knowledge and experiences that impact personal and professional lives.
ODD connects you to a much wider community of designers than I couldn't have imagined building on my own. The program brings designers from all backgrounds to share their wealth of knowledge in a more intimate setting.
ODD is an energetic, generous, intense melting pot of highly ambitious designers looking for their next steps. It’s like having your own design safe space outside of your company.
ODD helped give me clarity on my design career path. It helped me discover my unknown unknowns, skills and ideas from the design community that I did not even know existed for me to learn and master.
ODD is a high-octane and intense design experience with an incredibly high level of quality of both speakers, fellows and On Deck staff.
ODD brings together the most talented, driven, and authentic designers in the world—for deep, candid, and long-lasting connections.
Ready to apply?
FAQ
To be a good fit for ODD, you are probably:
- Someone who recently moved into a people management or leadership role as a Design Manager or a Head of Design. Or you’ve been in a leadership position for a while, and are eager to increase your impact and accelerate your career.
- A Senior, Lead or Principal-level designer. You are exploring a path to management and leadership, and looking for a safe space to do so.
- Eager to be an active participant and contributor in a growing community, as much of the value of On Deck comes from the network and peer-to-peer connections.
- Excited about the opportunity to collaborate with other fellowships like founders, no-code, climate tech, writers and others.
- The community is not exclusively for people managers and leaders. Our members are also first designers at early-stage companies, staff, principal and lead-level designers. While we’re kicking off education with a Design Management track, other tracks are also in development and we encourage you to apply, even if your career path isn’t towards management.
ODD is an annual membership that costs $2990/year. After acceptance, we’ll work with your team to expense some or all of the cost through L&D. Payment options are available.
After the 4-week onboarding, ODD will be there for you for as much (or as little) as you need it. This is how a random week could look like, a month or 2 years from now:
- On Monday, there's a session on using narratives to build human-centric brands. You are busy so you attend while you respond to emails but you're not super concerned because the session is recorded anyway and will be in the Library for whenever you need it.
- On Tuesday, you meet for 60 minutes with your core Mastermind group. You've been meeting twice a month for the past quarter, and your intimate conversations have been tremendously helpful as you’re growing your team.
- On Wednesdays there's no official programming but you are looking to bring on a couple of senior designers to your team so you set up a couple 1:1s with people in the community to help you in your search. Maybe you end up hiring someone, who knows.
- On Thursday, a couple of Fellows scheduled sessions on executive presentations. That looks great but you gave a talk to the community on strategic thinking last week so you decide to take it easy this Thursday and focus on unblocking that big project at work.
- On Friday there's another Community Session on hiring but you decide to skip that one as well. You want to attend the social event that happens every Friday afternoon then relax for the weekend. You're starting the Design Management module next Wednesday and it'll be a bit more intense for the next few weeks.
Whatever challenge you are facing, ODD will be there, even if you're extremely swamped at work and you just need to decompress.
- We don't expect you to go to everything. We pack a lot into the membership. There are a number of different formats that might peak your interest, some being more interactive than others. It's a lot to take in at once, but we recommend that you prioritize from the get-go to avoid becoming overwhelmed!
- We are big on peer-to-peer learning. A lot of the value of this program comes from other Fellows! Whether this is through the resources shared on Slack, the community hosted sessions, or from advice and support given during your recurring small group meetings, there are a ton of ways to learn — not just through official programming.
Our goal is to make the Fellowship accessible to the absolute best talent, no matter their financial situation.
All Fellows have the option to pay in four monthly installments (with no interest or additional charges). We also have a limited number of scholarships available thanks to our Access Fund. Information about scholarship applications will be provided to accepted Fellows closer to the kickoff date.
Between attending sessions, meeting other fellows 1:1, and curated mastermind groups you can expect to spend ~2-5 hours per week engaging with the program. We recognize that everyone in the program is working full time with busy schedules and a lot of personal commitments so engagement may vary week to week and that’s ok.
We have purposefully structured the program with your busy schedules in mind, allowing for structured content, a speaker series, and more curated small group sessions pairing those with challenges to those who have solved them before. We will also record and share sessions and engage asynchronously on Slack. This structure will continue throughout the annual membership.
Yes. ODD will be run entirely remotely.
Post-COVID, we’ll return to organizing offline programming like dinners, small gatherings, and retreats, but the core Membership will remain a remote-first experience.
Yes. ODD will be entirely remote. This enables participation from all corners of the world. We’ve spent multiple ODD cohorts mastering the playbook for building remote communities and relationship building online, and will apply the same approach here.
Post-COVID, we’ll return to organizing offline programming like dinners, small gatherings, and retreats, but the core Membership will remain a remote-first experience.
Once we have multiple tracks running concurrently, we’ll help you assess which track is most suitable for you via onboarding, goal setting and pathfinding sessions. This will help you clarify what is most suitable and therefore get the most value out of the track.
We accept applications on a rolling basis. Upon acceptance, you’ll be invited to join the next onboarding cohort. There are currently 3 onboarding cohorts in place per year. The next cohort kicks off on August 22nd. To be considered for this cohort, you must apply by August 1st.
