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Poll: Does your startup have a designer on the founding team?

21 points by replicatorblog ↗ HN
A submission about a very well designed website (http://www.astorybeforebed.com) is currently generating a lot of upvotes and comments. It led me to wonder how many startups, YC or otherwise, have designers on their founding teams.

Does your startup have a designer on the founding team?

30 comments

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icey
It may be worthwhile to add 2 options:

  Would have a designer on the founding team
  Would not have a designer on the founding team
From personal experience, I have never had a designer in the early stages of any projects I've worked on; but I would certainly be open to doing a startup with a designer on the founding team, especially if they were also good with UX.
replicatorblog
Icey,

Great call, will be far more interesting this way. I think designers are a great way to humanize a service. For all the lip service Apple gets re: design it is a bit surprising that fewer startups use it as a competitive advantage. The AirBNB guys from YCW09 are a great example of a team with 2 designers on the founding team who have gone on to great success.

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megamark16
I would LOVE to team up with a designer who knew their way around the Django template system. A little javascript/jquery/ajax experience would be nice, but I can always work that stuff in myself if someone who knows how to make something look good and flow cohesively tells me where they want it to go :)
replicatorblog
MegaMark,

You bring up an interesting point. How do you weigh Aesthetics/UX Flow/Front End Implementation? I think most folks look for the latter at the detriment of the former. BTW, If you are looking for designers shoot me an email. I have a lot of talented folks in my network who would love to talk to you!

notauser
I think any team consisting of 2-3 people can't afford any person who has only one skill.

It's a pretty common evolution for a designer to branch out into UX, so if one is looking for a designer it would be natural to look for a designer + UX engineer.

Personally I'd take designer+sales or designer+sysop pretty happily, but those are fairly rare skill blends!

megamark16
I agree, I consider myself to be somewhat multifaceted and it would be nice to find a cofounder or two who could also help out with multiple aspects of the startup.
MHLWorldwide
IF you have enough brain power to come of with a business concept that actually works, you should be able to find someone that is fairly reasonable to help get your Website looking good.
replicatorblog
How would you launch a site like the story book one without good design? I get that you can gloss up many sites after the fact, but there seem to be a number of categories (e.g. games) where UX/Aesthetics are key from launch.
haydenchambers
This 'trap' is really old... namely treating design as some sort of lipstick on the pig. Design doesn't consist in producing attractive photoshop files. In web UX is an intricate part of the design process and vice versa.
megamark16
I agree, my current employer spent the last five years building a product using mostly overseas developers with one developer over here coordinating and piecing together the code. They treated development as something that just needed to be done, as apposed to treating it like the core of their product (which it is). Now they have a big, slow, behemoth and they've finally brought more developers in house to try to help clean things up. I think that a lot of people tend to treat design and UX the same way, something that just needs to "get done", as apposed to something that (might) be a major piece of your product or service.
replicatorblog
For those of you who don't want founders on the starting team, why not? I understand the POV for certain kinds of startups (e.g. a cloud hosting service), but is it more a perception of designers as less useful?
stingraycharles
I do not see a designer as someone critical to the success of a startup -- you can safely hire an external designer who isn't necessarily as passionate about the company and still get a very decent design. Furthermore, I kinda see design as a problem that needs to be solved once, while technical and sales/marketing problems continuously arise and need to be solved.

Disclaimer: I'm in a niche enterprise market, so design is less important for me than startups developing for consumers.

replicatorblog
I think you are certainly right that design is less of a success factor in the enterprise, though 37 Signal shows that a bit of design can get people excited about a fairly underfeatured (intentionally or not) product.

I think of something like World of Warcraft that wouldn't work as a tech only company with no design/narrative. Same thing with a lot of iPhone apps

stingraycharles
I think you are certainly right that design is less of a success factor in the enterprise, though 37 Signal shows that a bit of design can get people excited about a fairly underfeatured (intentionally or not) product.

Yeah, that reminds of client who once told me "people want their beer with foam" as a metaphore: no matter where you go, people are still people, and they like to be pampered.

replicatorblog
Interesting results so far: 25% of teams have a designer, 66% of teams want one.
dageroth
I started out with a very talented designer and I'd say a designer is key to decide what features are essential and cut ot all the clutter. I'd also involve him not only in the design of the website, but the actual design of the company and the product. There are so many processes in startup that can benefit from a designer mindset.

And there is always something to actually design as every new feature should be carefully integrated into the the most intuitive way. So, our designer was actually the one who had to work the most hours, because once the design was done implementation was fairly straightforward - but it took always a lot of creative work to get there.

diN0bot
my team is half dev and half other, where designer and outreach are primary other skills.

sometimes i get frustrated that my plate is almost always overflowing, while my partners, who is no slacker, essentially works part-time.

the important thing is that together we nail the right tasks in the right order. having a designer on the team is critical for that, both in web design and other paraphernalia relating to outreach, presentations and mailings.

the ideal team has all the necessary skills and 100% commitment. i think some people are saying no because they're considering money and hiring options...or something...

the "do you have a designer on your team" could mean an existing team member acquires that skill, in which case, win, right?

vaksel
How about e), don't have a designer, but good enough without one.
wgj
A couple observations from my experience:

1) It's hard to find truly insightful designers who also have an entrepreneurial instinct. The most famous examples who do are legendary. (The Real Steve Jobs)

2) Hiring out for design work usually means superficial work like graphics, layout, etc. The reason to include a designer as a founder is to go deep on user experience and other psychology of the user, in a way that no one can or will do for hire.

replicatorblog
1) It's true. I think a lot of that is training. Most design programs don't promote an entrepreneur track. There really is nothing like YC or even the constellation of tech bloggers who can share the path with young designers.

2) Exactly. It is like Steve Jobs quote "We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing. In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the colour or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together."

dasil003
I agree except I would say that you're confusing vision with design. The core of a successful product is the vision. The design of the product is the realization of that vision.

Someone with no technical or design skills can have a very strong vision, and a good designer can work with that person to bring out a superb product even if the designer has no personal vision or even an investment in the final product.

In that way, visionary is to designer as designer is to engineer.

replicatorblog
You are right. designers can have vision, engineers can as well. A good product manager can do the same. I was curious about designers because they tend to come from more blended liberal arts backgrounds that has a more human focus. In addition they have technical skills to be able to produce assets that are useful at the early stage vs. a product manager who tends to join later in the cycle.
wgj
"In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer."

That on its own is a great one-liner.

replicatorblog
Slightly OT, but I think the designer training is especially relevant to 2). The main method of assessment in design school is the critique. You design something, pin it on a board, then have to explain it to 20 classmates and your professor. If you slack it is immediately visible. You also start thinking about how you will communicate it while you work which informs the process. I'm sure this is more the case with CS folks now that the web is a central distribution channel vs. when project output was a compiled file shared on floppy.
pxlpshr
I agree with your generalities but I think it comes down to the person more so, and this is why I stand behind the notion of investing in people. There are just as many programmers I would not hire for the founding team for the same reasons you've cited. If you have a bit of money/funding, you can have just about anything built in regard to a minimum viable product these days...

This is a good article on hiring developers over programmers.

http://www.ericsink.com/bos/Hazards_of_Hiring.html

So on that same note, if you're going to put a "designer" on your founding team then I feel he/she should be able to do more than just design pretty pictures... their roll should be moreorless a hands-on product manager who works with the founders/team to act as the voice of the customer and manage the experience.

japanesejay
Yep! Actually thats me! Theres quite a difference between about having "a designer" and a product focused UI/UX person though. Luckily for me, im the latter group, and I share the product manager role as well as rally with the engineering team. its actually a fun role since i sit on both sides of the fence.
lchitch
Yes - take a look. www.kidthing.com
lchitch
Having good design and visual communication is a key element of brand creation, understanding the message and good user experience.