How valuable are designers to a startup team?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47310

by kyro • 19 years ago

17 29 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Compared to the value of having coders on a team, how do designers stack up? Is it common to have a designer on board, or to just a design firm? Also, have the majority of teams accepted to YC had designers on the team, and if not, what have they done? Perhaps pg can best answer that last one.

Thanks.

staunch2• 19 years ago

I'd love to have a graphics/HTML/CSS/Flash designer for my most recent project. Neither myself nor my partner would be willing to trade much equity for one though, if design was all they'd contribute. Between the two of us we have enough design sense and skill to create beautiful-enough minimal designs. I think any good hacker can do simple and effective design if they try.

Earth-shattering graphic design is out of easy reach for most of us, but designing simple to use interfaces doesn't take much more than careful thought and a desire to do so. A big part of what designers do just isn't necessary in a startup where the founders actually care about making things good already. Designers are often essential at larger companies, where the employees aren't motivated enough to give a lot of care to things like ease-of-use, flow, and beauty.

SwellJoe4• 19 years ago

I've got good news and bad news.

First the good news: Good designers aren't interested in working for equity in your brand new wholly unproven company.

Now the bad news: Good designers aren't interested in working for equity in your brand new wholly unproven company.

Good design is far more expensive than you think. And I believe you've severely underestimated it's value in a startup. (I've historically done so, as well. But I learn eventually.)

staunch2• 19 years ago

> Good design is far more expensive than you think. And I believe you've severely underestimated it's value in a startup

Good design doesn't cost anything if you do it yourself. Google did it for virtually nothing and beat Yahoo's horde of professionals. They're hardly alone. Maybe it's hard to tell from the way I talk about it but I think design is immensely valuable. I just think it's not some sacred craft that only people called designers can do.

falsestprophet• 19 years ago

How much do good designers cost for a typical modern web application?

Harj• 19 years ago

we found that having a specialized graphic designer who can't do any coding wasn't very efficient for getting things from idea to prototype quickly. having someone who has an interest in design and good UI but can also hack is the ultimate - that's worth trading generous equity for.

rickcecil2• 19 years ago

If anyone on a founding team is ever willing to do only one thing, then they're probably not a good founding member period. This goes for hackers, designers, business folks, and lion trainers. (Well, the lion trainers might be the exception here. I learned this lesson the hard way--it's hard typing with my right arm missing. On the plus side, we didn't have to feed Betsie for a month!)

herdrick• 19 years ago

You're going to need good design. It's best if your founding team has some design talent, but if not, you may be able to get by with hired guns. But in that case you'd better have someone else who can evaluate the quality of the hired guns.

SwellJoe4• 19 years ago

The majority of YC companies have not, but it's a huge win if you do. pg places very high value on good design (with good reason). And YC companies have much better design by the time they leave, if they have their eyes open and half a brain. Every YC group has at least one rock star designer. The best known is probably Kevin Hale from Wufoo/Particle Tree, but other seriously good designers have been involved.

So, early stage, it is valuable--maybe not valuable enough to have one as a full partner with equal equity, but maybe.

The reason I say possibly not is because I know many of the "rock star" designers from YC companies now, and at least a few aren't feeling very important to the process or involved in the day-to-day development (and some have packed up and gone home). If you can't foresee significant design work throughout a long period of time, maybe an equal partner designer isn't the way to go.

So, great design is a huge value. It's up to you to decide if it is worth an equal stake (it's almost certainly worth some equity, if you can get someone good to work for equity and don't have the 10-15k it'll take to hire a good designer for a couple of weeks), and whether they'll be twiddling their thumbs in six months.

As Harj said, a designing hacker (even if the hacking is fair to middling--if the design skill is really strong) is a champ worth her weight in gold.

unfoldedorigami• 19 years ago

On Particletree, Chris wrote an article about the role of design in business in regards to how it affects morale and motivation at Wufoo.

http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-design-in...

brezina• 19 years ago

Luckily we have Gabor on our team, and he is the kind of rock-star player who is in the top 1% of hackers and top 5% of designers. We use a great design firm to fill the gaps (www.vestaldesign.com). We use the design firm when we can't afford spending internal Xobni team member resources on design or when we need an outside perspective on our UI.

In my experience, it is incredibly valuable to use a designer with some coding experience. They appreciate the limitations of the medium.

blored• 19 years ago

We have Mark, he's by far in the top third of something. He's also figuring out this CSS thing.

german2• 19 years ago

To figure out the CSS thing I recommend:

Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML. Awesome book, does anyone has read it?

mattmaroon• 19 years ago

Design means different things to different people. If you mean that in terms of workflow/ease of use, that's going to be largely a function of the team and feedback from customers.

As far as the graphic design that can easily and cheaply be outsourced, though even then you'd ideally want one or more founders with a good aesthetic sense to work with them.

Alex3917• 19 years ago

Perhaps you should start with the question "How valuable is good design to the team" and work backwards. :-)

naivehs• 19 years ago

First impression is important. You got an ordinary grey building on one side, and Taj Mahal on the other. Which one would you rather walk into?

Next round of Y Combinator starts in January, plenty of time to learn the mechanics of designing. Your already got a head start from the experience of personal preferences.

ivankirigin• 19 years ago

This was discussed a bit here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33568

anson• 19 years ago

Find a hacker-designer, even if it means expanding from 2 to 3 cofounders. Or become that hacker-designer.

Good design and flow is critical, especially for consumers apps. I'd say that 2 of 3 of our founders consider design as one of our core competencies and I think its made a huge difference.

But even if its not a core competency, make it one of yours! Our 1 non-designer cofounder learned about and talked to other startups about design, and ended up coming up with our biggest design improvement to date - removing the whole "website" from the frontpage. If you go to Anywhere.FM, you'll notice we don't take you to a "website" and this change reduced our bouncerate by 50% (compared to the Alpha release). This certainly trumps most technical feats we've accomplished to date.

Finally, its good to have multiple opinions (but not get locked up in minor details), so that the UI targets a wide audience - not just the audience the designers are most in tune with. Its easy to target only yourself, and we probably still suffer from that today.

greendestiny• 19 years ago

Interesting stats on the bouncerate, fits with what I've always thought which is if you're a web app then the landing page needs to be the app.

german2• 19 years ago

Design is very important, I'll say its as important as code, If your code is great and your UI is just bad, people won't use your app. It's a huge advantage to have a designer in your team, mostly because a startup changes so fast that depending of an outsider to redesign or add new features will just don't work. I think design is not just looking good, but being easy to use and understand.

myoung8• 19 years ago

Our team is just two guys. My co-founder is a rockstar hacker. I wouldn't call myself a rockstar designer, but I'm taking care of all that stuff (graphic design, UI, copywriting, etc.) as well as marketing.

I've always liked designing things, so even though I'm no rockstar, what we've got is good enough (read: design that won't be noticed by the user--not horrendous, not stunning).

If I was just doing business stuff and my co-founder had to do design as well we wouldn't be getting anywhere fast. Good design takes time, but it doesn't have to be flashy. Find someone who understands usability (Fitts' Law) and knows HTML/CSS. Like everyone else has said, if they can hack, even better. I'd also add that if they like the b-side and understand what hacking involves (even if they can't do it well) they will be very useful to the team (read: deserve full equity).

menloparkbum• 19 years ago

If you ask myspace or ebay, not very.

bdr• 19 years ago

Q: How does startup by two hackers get a well-designed website? How much does it matter?

Paul Graham: Matters different amounts depending on the application. The solution Google uses is just to make pages very bare and functional. They have no design sense, but they try not to need it.

How valuable are designers to a startup team?

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