Cambio Ventures

Investing in social good

About the client

Cambio Labs™ is a social impact education startup dedicated to transforming learners into agents of change. Through their Social Entrepreneurship Incubator Program, they empower students to become social entrepreneurs, impact-driven designers, and community activists by guiding them through the process of ideating, pitching, prototyping, and launching their own mission-driven ventures.

Their curriculum fosters a strong entrepreneurial and designer mindset while helping students build essential 21st-century skills such as communication, collaboration, financial literacy, pitching, and business management. Cambio Labs combines design thinking with real-world social and environmental challenges, encouraging learners to build solutions that matter.

Industry: FinTech, Social Entrepreneur, Education Investment

Platform: Webapp

Project overview

Cambio Labs was nurturing a new generation of mission-driven entrepreneurs, but lacked a centralized platform to connect them with aligned impact investors. While founders had strong, socially driven ventures, and investors were eager to fund such initiatives, there was no streamlined way for the two groups to find and engage with each other.

Our team was brought in to design Cambio Ventures—a digital platform that bridges this gap by helping investors discover, connect with, and support early-stage, impact-focused startups. The platform enables investors’ onboarding, project discovery, founder communication, and streamlined donation or investment processes.

UX Team : Michael Joel De Leon, Emma Goldman, Ziwei Lu

Services : Webapp design, UX Consulting

Understanding Cambio Labs, the investing process, and the vision for Cambio Ventures.

To design a meaningful solution, we began by grounding ourselves in Cambio Labs’ purpose and understanding the deeper "why" behind their new initiative, Cambio Ventures. Our goal wasn’t just to build a platform, it was to extend the impact of their educational programs by creating real-world opportunities for their alumni to grow and sustain their ventures.

We kicked off the project by:

  • Diving into the mission and values of Cambio Labs to ensure alignment between the product and the organization's social impact goals

  • Exploring the investment landscape, including how impact investors discover and evaluate early-stage ventures

  • Collaborating closely with the co-founders to clarify their long-term vision for Cambio Ventures and the type of value it should deliver to both entrepreneurs and investors

These early conversations helped us identify key pain points and define the strategic foundation for the platform, ensuring that every design decision would support deeper connections, greater visibility, and accessible opportunities for change-making founders.

Challenge through the lens of the Cambio Labs Team

From the perspective of the Cambio Labs team, the challenge was clear: They were helping young founders build brilliant, socially impactful ventures, but once they graduate, their journeys become fragmented.

While the incubator equipped students with entrepreneurial skills and innovative ideas, there was no structured path to help them take the next step, securing funding and forming connections that could bring their visions to life.

The team recognized a critical gap:

  • Entrepreneurs lacked visibility there was no centralized place to showcase their work to investors

  • Investors lacked access, they had no easy way to discover or learn about these mission-driven ventures

  • Cambio Labs lacked a system to sustain support for founders beyond the classroom experience

They envisioned Cambio Ventures as a bridge between education and real-world impact. In this digital space, ideas didn’t just end with a final pitch, but could grow into fully funded, thriving enterprises.

Our task was to bring that vision to life through thoughtful, user-centered design.

Research approach

During the discovery phase, we focused on understanding the landscape from both the investor’s and entrepreneur’s perspectives. Our research approach included:

  • Industry research to understand trends in impact investing and startup funding

  • Competitive analysis to evaluate how existing platforms connect founders with investors, and where they fall short

  • Investor and VC interviews to uncover how they source opportunities, evaluate startups, and what information they look for when considering mission-driven investments

What did we learn

Through research, interviews, and competitive analysis, several key insights emerged:

  • Investors rely heavily on personal networks and referrals, which limit access for early-stage and underrepresented founders. Trust and human connection are critical in the investment process.

  • The investment journey is lengthy and relationship-driven, often taking months of due diligence, meetings, and document reviews. Investors want confidence in both the project and the founding team before committing funds.

  • Social impact investing is growing, but many investors struggle to efficiently discover ventures that align with their values and areas of expertise.

  • Existing platforms prioritize profits over purpose, creating a gap where socially driven ventures remain underrepresented and undervalued in traditional funding spaces.

  • Investors rarely use platforms for discovery, preferring recommendations from their network because they trust the judgment of peers who understand their interests. This highlights the need to embed a sense of human connection and trusted curation into the platform experience.

These insights shaped our approach: the platform needed to be more than just a listing site. It had to recreate the trust and personalization of a strong network, prioritize human connection, and serve as a curated space where purpose-aligned entrepreneurs and investors can build lasting relationships

Research assets

Affinity map

Competitive Analysis

Aha Moment : Building trust through connection

As we synthesized our research, one insight stood out above all: trust precedes investment.

Across every interview and interaction, it became clear that early-stage investment is deeply personal. Decisions don’t begin with a pitch deck they begin with a connection. Most investors discover promising ventures through trusted referrals, where someone in their network vouches for a team or mission. This personal validation builds the confidence needed to move forward.

Initially, we thought building a searchable platform would be enough to connect investors with founders. But as we listened more deeply, a pattern emerged: investors were hesitant to use digital platforms because they lacked context, felt transactional, and often failed to reflect the trust-based nature of real-world introductions.

This was our turning point. We realized that the platform couldn’t just list ventures it had to build bridges. If we wanted to support underrepresented founders and open new pathways for impact investors, we had to design a space that felt like a warm introduction, not a cold pitch.

That shift reframed our mission: design a platform that fosters human connection and trust, helping investors feel confident engaging with founders even those outside their usual circles. In doing so, we could honor the relational dynamics of early-stage investing while making the process more equitable and accessible.

Turning Insights into Ideas

Once we recognized that trust precedes investment, our focus shifted: instead of simply building a searchable platform, we needed to design a space that felt like a warm introduction. This meant translating our research findings into features that could replicate the relationship-building power of an investor’s personal network.

We began with a guiding question:
How might we create a digital experience that mimics the trust, relevance, and connection found in real-world referrals?

This question grounded our ideation sessions and helped us prioritize features that spoke directly to investor needs:

  • Curated project recommendations based on selected impact areas during sign-up, mimicking how colleagues introduce relevant ventures aligned with investor interests.

  • Search and filtering functionality to help investors easily navigate ventures by focus area, stage, or mission, reducing cognitive overload and surfacing relevant opportunities quickly.

  • Founder-centric profiles that emphasize personal story, motivation, and team dynamic—allowing investors to connect emotionally before any pitch or paperwork.

  • "Start Funding" and "Contact the Team" CTAs, offering intuitive, low-pressure entry points to initiate relationships while maintaining user autonomy.

  • A mentorship tab, clearly signaling that engagement goes beyond financial contributions, opening doors to strategic and relational support.

  • Personal dashboards that help investors manage ongoing conversations and interactions, supporting the long, non-linear journey typical of early-stage investing.

As we brainstormed and wireframed, we kept coming back to one key realization: the investment journey doesn’t begin with data—it begins with trust. Our goal was to infuse that sense of credibility and human connection into every touchpoint.

Balancing user needs with client goals also became a core part of our ideation. We designed to empower both funders and founders—giving entrepreneurs a platform to showcase their work authentically, while providing investors with enough context to spark curiosity, build confidence, and initiate the next step.

By staying close to our research insights and iterating with client feedback, our ideas evolved from simple functionality into a relationship-centered experience—one that honored both the mission of Cambio Labs and the personal nature of impact investing.

Ideation Assets

Task flow

Site map

UI Inspiration

Turning ideas into interface

🖥 Home Page Introduction

Welcome to Cambio Ventures.

The home page is designed to introduce first-time visitors to the mission, methods, and impact of the organization. We created a warm, engaging entry point that features an inspiring video from the founder, a snapshot of student-led projects, and a clear breakdown of how users can get involved. The layout guides users toward understanding what Cambio offers and how they can take the next step in their journey.

💡 Value: Builds immediate trust, sparks curiosity, and helps users quickly understand how Cambio Ventures empowers them to create meaningful change.

📂 Project Discovery Page


We designed a dedicated discovery page that allows investors to easily browse, filter, and explore ventures. Each project is presented as a visual card featuring the company logo, name, and industry for quick recognition. To simplify navigation and surface relevant opportunities, we included filters for industry and startup stage, helping investors efficiently find ventures that align with their interests and goals.

💡 Value: Simplifies project exploration, boosts visibility for emerging ventures, and fosters stronger investor–founder connections through clear categorization and intuitive design.

🏢 Company Profile Page


We designed an in-depth company page structured around four key sections Startup & Product, Pitch, Timeline, and Team to tell the full story of each venture. The Startup & Product section introduces the mission, backstory, and core offering. The Pitch section features a compelling video pitch along with highlights from the business plan. The Timeline maps out major milestones from launch to present. In the Team section, visitors can meet the people behind the venture through photos, roles, and bios.

At the top of the page, a Team Dashboard offers a quick-glance summary that includes key links (website, pitch, contact), team snapshots, and a data-rich Growth Journey card—highlighting funding goals, sales, endorsements, Cambio milestones, venture badges, and contact/donation options.

💡 Value: Offers a clear, investor-ready snapshot of each venture’s vision, progress, and people—making it easy to evaluate impact, credibility, and momentum at a glance.

📊 Investor Dashboard

We designed a personalized Investor Dashboard structured around five key tabs: Financial Overview, Activity, Watchlist, Taxes & Documents, and Messages to give investors full visibility into their connections and contributions.

The Financial Overview tab provides a clear breakdown of how funds have been allocated and the amount generated to date, along with key contact information and brief updates from connected ventures. The Activity tab logs all current and past updates from teams, helping investors track progress over time.

In the Watchlist tab, investors can view and manage the teams and ventures they've saved for future follow-up. The Taxes & Documents section consolidates all legal paperwork in one easy-to-access place. Finally, the Messages tab enables direct communication with ventures they’ve connected with, making it simple to stay engaged and build relationships.

💡 Value: Offers a centralized, investor-first experience that combines real-time updates, financial clarity, and relationship management, empowering investors to stay informed and take action with confidence.

Project Outcome

The project as a whole was well received by testers and stakeholders alike. Users praised the platform’s clarity, intuitive navigation, and the way it brought key information like business plans, pitches, and updates into one cohesive experience. Feedback emphasized how the platform made it easier to discover, understand, and support early-stage ventures, fulfilling its goal of making impact investing more accessible and engaging.