Enrique Allen

In memory of our friend in the design community

Dear readers,

It was difficult to write about anything this week. Trust me, I tried. All I can think about is Enrique Allen. For this week, whether you knew him or not, I’d like to share my memories and what he meant to me, and everyone in the design community.

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I vividly remember a morning in 2016. I recently took over as lead designer at One Medical. We were walking over to the Designer Fund office a few blocks away. Upon entering the brick building, I met Enrique Allen, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of the Designer Fund. It was our first meeting, and he gave me a huge hug as one would a long-time friend. If I were to be honest with you, I was intimidated. The Designer Fund was a company that felt iconic to me. Many people started their design careers because of Designer Fund’s Bridge Program, which connected designers to the most iconic software companies in the Bay Area. I looked up to Enrique and Ben Blumenrose, his co-founder and long-time friend from their Facebook days. To meet with Designer Fund about partnering with Bridge at One Medical felt surreal.

The timing of a partnership didn’t pan out, but Enrique wanted to stay in touch— offering his time to jam or collaborate. Investing at the time was foreign to me— thinking of it as a dream that wasn’t attainable. I left the meeting inspired and left with one simple reaction.

I want to be like Enrique Allen, the investor at Designer Fund.

A few years later, I reached out to Enrique to catch up. A lot changed in my life. It was 2020, the peak of the pandemic, and I recently moved to Palm Springs. We caught up on the phone as I caught him up on a few years of my career. Of course, he was already familiar with everything—keeping tabs on how people were doing and rooting for them on the sidelines. We discussed his love for Palm Springs, a region he frequented and had family living there. I was now at Webflow and the idea of angel investing became more tangible over the years. We got into one of the famous jams and brainstorms; thinking about how could now work together again. After our catch-up, Enrique and I played email tennis. He made introductions and connected me with opportunities to invest.

Over the years, I’ve co-invested with the Designer Fund with Ben and Enrique, who I coined Benrique because of their close brotherhood and friendship. Whether it was at Kinference, a Designer Fund event, or running into each other on the streets of San Francisco, I would continually receive the Enrique bear hug whether it’s been 12 months or 12 days since we’ve seen each other.

Designer Fund event with our friend Noah Levin, one of the first meetups I attended after returning to San Francisco in Fall 2023.

The last time I saw Enrique was this September. I just returned from Berlin and joined a Design Fund dinner. I received the bear hug; one I still feel today. I did not know what he was fighting. All I knew was he continually living life how all his friends would describe him: joyous, optimistic, and gracious. Ben said it best in his letter. Enrique is a force of nature. Whether you’ve never met him or known him your entire life, he seemed to treat every human being with the same love and care.

I am heartbroken about the loss of a friend and someone I considered a mentor; the force of nature that fueled my ambition to be an investor and support the design ecosystem. My thoughts are with Ben, the friends at Designer Fund, the designers he touched, and of course, his beautiful family. This won’t be easy, but I feel the best way to honor Enrique’s life is for all of us to live ours to the fullest with joy and optimism for what is to come.

I will miss you, Enrique. I will always remember the first time we met and thinking I wanted to be Enrique Allen, the investor at Designer Fund. After years of your love and support, I iterated on the aspiration.

I want to be like Enrique Allen, the person.