Ask HN: Where To Find Design Founders | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where To Find Design Founders

7 pointsJudson5 comments

Some founders have both the developer and designer skills, while some only have the "developer" part (and all the mixes in between). I'm a 20 year old developer, and, while I can design well enough to not embarrass myself, I'm no Tim Van Damm.

I think that having someone that specializes in design is essential to a team, as the design of an application (typically) is the application to its users. So the question:

Where do you find good designers to help co-found? Would the graphics design department at my university be a good place to start?

It is becoming more apparent to me that finding someone that can create a unique design concept and bring it to life is actually quite rare.

Seriously! Luckily, I am in a relationship with an excellent one. whew

If you are only looking for college students the search will have a pretty limited scope, won't it? Isn't there a design club on campus?

I wouldn't say that I am only limiting my search to college students, but in a college town that is probably one of the only options.

I sent an email to the graphics design department asking if they had any students that might be interested, but they were very unhelpful.

Man, I'm in the same boat, and I work with some great designers, I just get the impression that they'd rather be doing cool designy stuff than get involved with a boring business oriented app. :-(

Is this a common problem among technical founders? As a designer, I've often had the opposite problem.

Finding just any designer wouldn't be all that hard, but as a founder, you probably don't have 20K to spend on a designer, but allowing them an equity stake in the company and working side by side to develop the product would be an ideal solution.

I think the hardest part is just finding someone who is good and willing to apply themselves to a project, with the risk of a founder.

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