This was a good attempt, but I don't think this really nailed why designers don't move into founder roles. It has a lot more to do with the psychology of the type of person that goes into being a designer in the first place. It has a lot to do with the nature of art and the fear of failure.<p>The best designers are often frustrated artists that found comfort in design, where (perhaps subconsciously) they could use their talent without having the success or failure of their work fall 100% on them.<p>Being a collaborative process, design is kind of a shield from artistic criticism to some degree. If it fails, well it was the client's fault. But when you are known as a designer, <i>and</i> known as the founder, all the creative control comes down on you, which is akin to creating a work of art - with product primarily, but also the entire business as well. Everything you do subconsciously reflects on you as <i>an artist</i> instead of as a designer. Its scary. It can drive a creative person to madness, all of the things that go into a company, all the details that are completely fucking wrong all the time and you can't get control of any of them. Its like a painting with paint that never dries, and keeps dripping down the canvas. You constantly need to be painting or it looks like total crap, and <i>it is hanging in the gallery, right now</i> and everybody can see it. It makes me freaked out just thinking about it.<p>So while there are few designers who have made the leap to full-time founding entrepreneur I'm fairly certain that every designer has attempted to dip their toes into becoming the founding entrepreneur at least once, hit on this nightmarish reality, and then stepped back into the designer comfort zone with a sigh of relief...
Why don't more designers have founder skills? Or why don't more founders have design skills?<p>Good designers are rare, and good founders are rare. Individuals who are both good designers _and_ good founders should be extremely rare.
Designer and ex-founder weighing in. One thing I felt was that we had conflicting advice and incentives.<p>On one hand, incubator advisors, investors, and startup writers would say:<p>(1) "You should read pg's essays. You have to spend more time finding a market fit. Study your users. Make that your priority."<p>Frequently, from the same crowd, we'd also something along the lines of:<p>(2) "Make decisions faster. Ship it. Execution."<p>My design training was well-suited to (1), and completely undermined in (2). The problem was that we heard (2) a lot more because the main people we were talking to were investors and incubator staff, and their overriding priority was having a functional product with paying customers.<p>Of course design processes can move faster and balance planning with execution at a startup pace. But that doesn't happen much. The more common scenario is for a designer to be shown a working prototype and then make it prettier / more usable. And maybe that's the most reliable way for startups to get off the ground? I have no idea.
I'm not really a designer or a coder, so my words need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but if i was to ever improve a skill it would be on the design side so I say this with my designer hat on.<p>The thing is, if you're creating software and launching a business, you've got to be able to solve problems for your customer. While the mind of a designer might be that of problem solving and loving their craft, you invariably can't solve the problem for the client without some coding.<p>It's far easier to be a developer and code the solution then it is to be a designer and purely design it aesthetically. It doesnt serve much purpose as design alone.<p>With an MVP you can get away with poor design and some minimal code, but you cant get away with great design and NO functionality - Well you <i>can</i> but pulling it off is harder.<p>So as a designer, you always need a co-founder that can code, and we all know about bringing on CTO's for just an equity stake. It's not really going to happen.
Because it's really hard to pitch a company based on a PSD that you can't implement.<p>But sure, whatever cutesy anecdote or impression of reality you want to sell me will also suffice.
I think this is mostly bull, frankly. No matter how easy things get, most startups are meant to solve some kind of problem and they employ technical means to do so. You're never going to get rid of the need for a technical guy, no matter how things change.<p>The second most useful person is probably going to be a hustler/salesman/guy who knows people, who can get the product attention, or investment, or customers, or all three.<p>The designer comes in a pretty far third. Good design just isn't critical at early stages for most. And if you really want it, it can probably be contracted, in a way the first two roles never can. Finally, if talking to investors, guy #1 can show you a product or demo; guy #2 can show traction or social proof; what can the designer show?
As a designer I find the major hurdle of starting a business is the cost of development.<p>Also, if we are just starting out on our own, there's a chance that we aren't coming from a job that was paying the kind of money for a good base.<p>The assumption that I'm some sort of failed artist who 'fell back' to design is bullshit. I'm a creative and design is just one of a dozen outlets I have. I've had a soap company, a candle company, a line of various bath products, sold t-shirts, thrown parties, planned weddings, pressed 1" buttons, provided consultation and various marketing services for bands, wedding photography, product photography and more. My story is not unique for my people. :)
Interesting, although a couple of these factors (wanting to just spend all day working on your passion instead of wearing many hats) don't seem inherently limited to designers. Programmers can have an appreciation for their craft as well!
I was always under the impression that developers are also problem solvers, hence their ease of also coming up with an awesome enough idea to start a company.<p>Designers are artists. Once a designer does more than drawing and photoshop, they become a front-end developer. Using their primary craft of drawing, where is there to really go after that?<p>Developers have the advantage of being able to throw together a prototype of their web application and see if it's viable. Developers can also tackle the very difficult coding problems that can give a startup a competitive advantage.
The biggest problem is having a genius designer that happens to match perfectly with an engineer that can agree with the initial ideas. This also requires the engineer to be smart enough to realize the importance of the designer and allow her to be the CEO.