How founders can level up their design thinking and practice

Executive overview

Most founders underinvest in design, treating it as aesthetics rather than function. Design is how a product looks, how it works, and how it's built — all three are felt by users.

Designers are uniquely suited to found companies because their discipline maps directly onto desirability, the hardest of the three pillars (desirability, viability, feasibility) to get right.

Good taste is acquired, not innate — and the gap between thoughtful and unthoughtful design compounds over time.

Why designers make strong founders

• Design maps to desirability — the hardest of the three product pillars to get right
• Historically designers didn't control the means of production; software has changed that
• AI makes this moment especially powerful: designers can now go from sketch to working product faster than ever
• The discipline has shifted from artistic expression to problem-solving — closer to engineering than art

Three things to become more design-minded

1. Learn by doing — produce bad designs first; that's how you start to see why designs work or fail
2. Surround yourself with well-designed objects — physical and digital; develop intolerance for poor design
3. Read the classics — Grid Systems (layout and type), The Elements of Typographic Style (type as interface), The Design of Everyday Things (mental models and usability)

How taste is developed

• Taste is acquired, not taught — it comes from continuous evaluation of every interaction
• The lens: is this pleasant, reliable, lasting? Does it improve over time?
• In software, "improving over time" means adaptive interfaces, muscle memory, keyboard shortcuts
• Everything is designed — even unintentionally. Recognising this unlocks the desire to shape it consciously

The design process in practice

• Start with user problems, then sketch on paper — paper is unconstrained within a useful boundary
• Move quickly to high fidelity: from sketch to Figma wireframe or directly into code
• Building in the real medium matters: static prototypes break down without real data and real interaction
• Sketches are becoming more valuable in the AI era — a quick photo can now skip straight to working UI

On feel and the consistency-innovation balance

• "Like" is not a design word — something either works or it doesn't
• Respect platform norms and user expectations, then push the boundaries from that foundation
• Early assessment is taste; validation comes from putting a working prototype in front of users
• Users are the ultimate judge of whether a design works

Tactical moves for founders

• Hire a talented designer earlier than feels comfortable — it's high-leverage
• Tap existing networks (e.g. Y Combinator, Designer Fund) to find designers who want to join early-stage companies
• Be comfortable in the medium you're building in — for software, that means getting close to code
• Design is how the product is built, not just how it looks or works; the choice of technology and loading states are design decisions