What do startups/founders look for in designers?

6 pointskradeelav2 comments

I'm a design manager in a medium-sized corporation. Don't think I'd ever work for tech due to a variety of reasons, but every now and then I wonder what it would be like.

As in the title, what do you look for in your first design (and loosely, marketing) hire in a startup environment? Skills (hard and soft), type of projects in a portfolio, particular experience?

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The art-psychology on your site is really similar to what I see in designers for startups. I can see why you'd wonder.

- Good is bad / bad is good / value is best understood deeply, not in a shallow way

- Relations & roles are not set in stone; why should they be?

- Driven-enough by personal values to decide in a mature way whether they are a match or not

- Able to nurture a new vibe without fearing what it will turn into, etc.

- "Medium-sized" kind of sounds lame to them tbh

Startups are so variable in all kinds of ways...Good luck with wherever your career takes you.

At that point in a startup’s lifecycle it’s all about hard skills all the way. Hard skills and culture. Everything else can be taught.

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