Ask HN: Why do so many startups invest so little in design?

Because in the beginning, design is not as important as validation and user experience. Classic example: Stripe. If you look at recent submissions on HN about them, a lot of comments have been about their awesome design. But Stripe became so huge because they made it so simple to accept payments online and focussed heavily on being developer friendly. I remember their tagline used to be "payments for developers". At that time, their design was ok not as shiny as they are now. But it didn't matter initially.

So yea, as long as you are solving a real problem for your users and making their life easy, they don't care. A different example: Craigslist. Still the same as ever.

Hardly a company or product fails just because of bad design. That is why too much investment on design upfront is not worth it.

It's expensive for the very early stages. Sometimes it also messes with validation.

The biggest problems are so big that customers are willing to pay for an ugly, hacky interface because it's better than what they have.

If the selling point is that something is nicer looking than the competition, it's possible that it's the wrong problem to solve.

UX design can pay off, but usually UX kicks in around the stage where the users need a tutorial. In the very early stages, the features are often too crude and lacking to benefit from UX.

Because design is still a luxury skill set. We need it to become a slight more available in the market.

What’s your story? Sounds like you have firsthand experience.

I have seen this first hand many times. Many startups won't spend a dime on design. A $5k design budget is unthinkable. They are being pennywise and pound foolish IMO.

What makes you think they do?