Design Founders

Felix Lee built ADPList from a Google Spreadsheet during the pandemic into the world's largest free mentorship platform, with over 300 million minutes of mentorship and a Forbes 30 Under 30 recognition. But the story behind the numbers is messier than the headlines suggest. After nearly three years of giving everything away for free, ADPList was about to run out of money. The community loved it. The servers didn't care.In this episode, Felix shares the moment he realised free was going to kill his company, the brutal public backlash when he started charging, and why he says he'll never create anything for free again. We also get into his time as the founding designer at GoTrade (a YC company), where he spent 30% of his time in Figma and 70% in spreadsheets, and how that experience turned him from a designer into a founder who thinks in funnels.The second half of our conversation dives into vibe coding and the future of design. Felix lays out a concrete 5-step workflow for designers to go from idea to working prototype in three hours, without opening Figma or writing a line of code. His core argument: designers are hypothesis testers, and vibe coding lets them validate before they invest in polished design.## In This Episode- Felix's decision to move from Singapore to San Francisco- San Francisco as "traveling into the future" and the founder-as-translator framework- The anti-FOMO approach: hold a long-term vision, ignore the noise- How ADPList went from pandemic spreadsheet to global platform- "Free is expensive": the near-death moment that changed everything- Why Felix fires designers who separate business and design- 30% Figma, 70% spreadsheets: the GoTrade origin story- Vibe coding as a process reversal: build first, design after validation- The 5-step workflow: AI challenge, PRD, flowchart, Figma MCP, deploy- Why designers need to stop assuming and start experimenting## Timestamps0:00 Intro0:46 Bear's opening2:02 Felix joins: China trip and moving to San Francisco3:30 Why San Francisco: the story of meeting a stranger5:25 The AI era and consumer products8:10 SF as "traveling into the future"9:30 Best founders are translators of technology10:45 The anti-FOMO framework17:25 The ADPList origin story28:30 "Business and design are the same thing"32:35 30% Figma, 70% spreadsheets at GoTrade35:40 "Free is expensive": ADPList's near-death moment42:20 Vibe coding flips the design process48:55 The 5-step vibe coding workflow53:40 Advice for designers58:25 Closing## Links- ADPList: https://adplist.org- Felix on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/felixleezd- Felix on X: https://x.com/felixleezd- Design Founders: https://bearliu.com/podcast- Bear's newsletter: https://bear.academy