
Is there a thing called as a Designer Co-founder? - zeppelin_7
http://www.isingh.info/blog/2011/12/13/is-there-a-thing-called-as-a-designer-co-founder/
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nostrademons
It's because there's not enough work when the startup is first building their
project to fill up a pure designer's time, and if one of your cofounders is
sitting idle while you're trying to build a company, you have a serious
problem. Same reason there are very few tech startups with legal cofounders,
or accountant cofounders, or techwriter cofounders.

You do get a fair number of startups with designer/frontend-engineer
cofounders (37signals?) or designer/business cofounders (Apple?). But a
startup founder needs to wear many hats. If you define your specialty
narrowly, you won't be able to do everything that needs to be done to get a
business off the ground.

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zeppelin_7
Yes, but just as an engineer rises up to wearing many hats, why cant
designers? If they are ready for the plunge, they can dabble around in more
places, than just design. Plus like I said if the entire app is user
centric/facing, a designer (with some frontend) is very valuable. Being a
designer cofounder, I imagine a designer who is ready to do more, and willing
to bend/broaden him/her self.

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nostrademons
They can, but if they do, they're usually not called a "designer" anymore.
Usually they're at least a "business cofounder", if not a "visionary".

Steve Jobs is arguably one of the best designers of this generation. He's
almost never called a designer. He's called "the genius visionary behind Apple
Computer".

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zeppelin_7
Well an engineer doing everything is still an engineering founder, so why not
a designer doing more than designing be called so?

I think the question is why do fewer designers take the plunge as a founder.

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arvindsuresh
Because engineers build things. And can come up with a simple design
themselves, even though it might be a really bad design. We've all grown up
interacting with user interfaces. But designers haven't grown up playing with
code, and hence, its a relatively harder/non-traditional concept for them.

