Everyone Talks About Product–Market Fit. A Good Designer Can Help You Find It.
One of the things I find curious about the startup world is how often people talk about value — and how rarely they actually know how to find it.
One of the things I find curious about the startup world is how often people talk about value — and how rarely they actually know how to find it.
Over the past few years, I’ve coached dozens of design leaders—from newly promoted heads of design to seasoned VPs across a mix of fast-growing startups and more established brands. Different industries. Different team dynamics. But time and again, the same patterns emerge.
One of the most common mistakes I see founders make is thinking about design too late. They’ll bring in a designer to “make things look nice” after the product is built—when the features are locked in, the UX is baked, and the real strategic decisions have already been made.
Hiring your first designer can feel like a black box. You know design matters. You want your product to feel polished, trustworthy, and easy to use. But what kind of designer should you hire first?
The way we interact with the web today is surprisingly manual. Want to book a flight? You’ll probably head to a familiar airline’s website or open Google and type in your dates. If that site also offers hotel and car rental options, great—you might stay and book everything in one place. But more likely, you’re picky. So you go off searching for that perfect boutique hotel or the restaurant you’ve read about. Click by click, tab by tab, you stitch your trip together.
I grew up on a steady diet of martial arts movies Enter the Dragon. Fist of Fury. Bloodsport.
Bruce Lee slicing through opponents with surgical precision. Jackie Chan turning ladders and brooms into improvised weapons. Van Damme landing slow-motion head kicks that were somehow both brutal and balletic.