Stavan Patel
Stavan Patel is the Creative Director and Partner at Founders, Inc., the San Francisco venture firm operating from the Fort Mason campus 10. Before f.inc, he was Head of Design and part of the founding team at buildspace, where he shaped the visual identity of the Nights & Weekends program across five seasons 217. Patel grew up in India, moved to Chicago at age 14, and studied computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 1.
Early life and education
Patel was born and raised in India and moved to Chicago at the age of 14 1. He enrolled at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2010 and graduated in 2014 with a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering 2. The following year he completed HBX CORe — a 120- to 150-hour credential program covering business analytics, economics, and financial accounting — through Harvard Business School Online 2.
Microsoft and Skills4Afrika (2014–2017)
Patel's first job out of college was as an Azure consultant at Microsoft, where he worked from July 2014 to July 2017 23. During that period, in May–June 2016, he traveled to Lusaka, Zambia, as a startup mentor and web development coach with Skills4Afrika, a volunteer program teaching small and medium businesses how to build websites using HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap, develop social media strategies, and conduct business online 2.
Quze (2017–2022)
In August 2017 Patel left Microsoft to found Quze, an online course discovery platform 23. The company was incorporated in November 2018 as Quze Education Private Limited in Vadodara, Gujarat, India, with Patel and Jaya Lalwani as directors 9. Tracxn classified Quze's status as "deadpooled" by the time Patel moved on in March 2022, though the Indian legal entity remained active 9. He ran Quze for nearly five years before joining buildspace 8.
buildspace (2022–2024)
Patel joined buildspace in March 2022 as Head of Design, part of the founding team working alongside Farza Majeed 2817. At buildspace he designed the visual identity and branded artwork for seasons 3, 4, and 5 of Nights & Weekends — the free six-week cohort program that scaled from roughly 7,500 participants in Season 3 to over 120,000 in Season 5 112. He also designed the buildspace.so website, the buildspaceOS platform, and the campus experience at Fort Mason, drawing on an anime-inflected aesthetic that became a signature of the brand 111.
Beyond design work, Patel gave talks on topics including design fundamentals, growth hacking, and mental models for designers, sharing recordings through his personal site 12. His portfolio from the buildspace era also includes side projects such as Spectreseek, Alterok, Gaudmire, Erevald, and Dunbar, along with a Dream Team NFT collection and the Covers Gallery project 11.
Patel held the Head of Design role from March 2022 through buildspace's closure in September 2024 32. He describes his practice as spanning design, code, and storytelling: "I don't like to bucket myself into one category but I design, I code, I tell stories. I create experiences. Ultimately, all of my work is geared towards making people feel" 1.
Founders, Inc. (2025–present)
On April 22, 2025, Patel announced he was joining Founders, Inc. as Creative Director and Partner 4. The post described watching "one empty room stretch into a 42k sq ft playground for builders" over three years at Fort Mason and credited Furqan Rydhan as "our first and biggest believer" during the buildspace days 4. His title has been Creative Director and Partner since March 2025 23.
At f.inc Patel describes his role as "shaping narratives that help us discover and back the world's most ambitious founders" 2. He also designed the f.inc website 11. He continues to live in San Francisco, though he spends one to two months each year in India 1.
Four cornerstone programs
By April 2026, Patel had designed four cornerstone programs for Founders, Inc.: Off Season, Blueprint, Artifact, and Canopy 5.
Off Season is a six-week summer program for college students, recent graduates, and dropouts 13. The first cohort selected 48 teams to build on the Fort Mason campus; projects ranged from elevator robots and wildfire detection systems to multiplayer music platforms and autonomous drones 14.
Blueprint is a six-week fall program focused on hardware and physical AI, bringing founders to a shared lab on campus 13. The first cohort brought 50 hardware builders to San Francisco, producing projects including tabletop metal 3D printers, robotic arms for agricultural automation, and modular robotics for physical AI 15.
Artifact runs at the beginning of the year as a six-week program for founders starting their journey 13.
Canopy — the fourth program, announced in March 2026 — runs for five weeks and is the first f.inc program to combine software, hardware, and media under one roof 6. It accepts 100 teams at the San Francisco campus and 400 teams online, with weekly sessions from billion-dollar startup founders, $50K in credits for all participants, and up to $250K in funding for top teams 616. Patel framed the media track as addressing founders who "kept showing up" at f.inc events — creators with millions of subscribers, self-funded filmmakers, and two-person media brands — who had no dedicated program path before Canopy 7.