For those of you who don't want founders on the starting team, why not? I understand the POV for certain kinds of startups (e.g. a cloud hosting service), but is it more a perception of designers as less useful?
I do not see a designer as someone critical to the success of a startup -- you can safely hire an external designer who isn't necessarily as passionate about the company and still get a very decent design. Furthermore, I kinda see design as a problem that needs to be solved once, while technical and sales/marketing problems continuously arise and need to be solved.
Disclaimer: I'm in a niche enterprise market, so design is less important for me than startups developing for consumers.
I think you are certainly right that design is less of a success factor in the enterprise, though 37 Signal shows that a bit of design can get people excited about a fairly underfeatured (intentionally or not) product.
I think of something like World of Warcraft that wouldn't work as a tech only company with no design/narrative. Same thing with a lot of iPhone apps
I think you are certainly right that design is less of a success factor in the enterprise, though 37 Signal shows that a bit of design can get people excited about a fairly underfeatured (intentionally or not) product.
Yeah, that reminds of client who once told me "people want their beer with foam" as a metaphore: no matter where you go, people are still people, and they like to be pampered.
