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Goodbye Google.

Hello Capital One!
Starting tomorrow, there will be no more free lunches, subsidized massages, weekly company meetings, ringing colorful bicycle bells, or working with the brilliant pirates at Google’s Advanced Technology & Projects team, or ATAP. 
How Project Ara was born: a 14,002 mile journey across the country.
How Project Ara was born: a 14,002 mile journey across the country.
That last part is what I’ll miss most: working with the Project Ara team and thousands of Ara Scouts across the world who are making humanity’s first platform for "creative" electronics. The “consumer” electronics world is barely aware of what’s about to hit them!
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Project Ara industrial design.
But starting tomorrow, I also open my next chapter as VP of Design at Capital One, with an initial focus on mobile commerce and payments. Yes, you heard right. The bank with the “What’s in your wallet?” Samuel L. Jackson ads. And I don’t blame you if you’re like a few of my colleagues who think I’m a bit insane to leave one of the world’s most admired tech companies for a bank. 
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The incredible Capital One Design Thinking Studio in San Francisco.

But what you might not understand is that:

  1. there are few spaces as ripe for technology and human-inspired re-imagination as how people relate to their money, 
  2. Capital One has been steadily building a quiet but extraordinary design thinking, strategy and execution culture on top of its already legendary data analytics capability, 
  3. and when you stir the above and throw in the spark of vision & leadership:

*boom.

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My new office!

So, I’ll be working out of the SF studio, building a money team, focused on bold, breakthrough transformations that will help people connect with their finances in meaningful and delightful ways. That’s about all I can say at the moment. And in fact, I’m going to take some advice from a great mentor and let the work speak for itself over the upcoming months.

So goodbye Google. You’ve been amazing to me and continue to inspire with your openness and your moonshots.

And hello Capital One. Now is your moment, and I’m proud to be part of it!

// dan

Dan Makoski // VP of Design // Capital One