Comment by quique | Hacker News Reader

Comment by quique | Hacker News Reader

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1) We acknowledge the outliers like Lotus and YouTube, at least others have been life changing even if it wasn't billion dollar exits

2) Did you read previous comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3358703 Public data that was available to use as 'proxies'/indicators of value: User base, company size, funding, and acquisition amount...of course we'd like to show profit...a couple companies like Blurb submitted profit eg revenue 58M in 2010

3) It's not an us vs them comparison, again it's all about collaboration and multidisciplinary skills

4) Did you read previous comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3358727 -Of course the designers featured here can’t possibly take all the credit for any success, and they shouldn't, it's all about team work and we're celebrating design together no matter what background you come from

-The goal is to raise awareness about the existence of designer founders and their diverse backgrounds with data in a fun way that has never been done before (not draw causal claims)

This acts as a cheerleader for companies with designer co-founders. That's great, I really appreciate the effort.

The problem is that many of the companies you highlight are -inconsequential-. If you're going to make a claim about how much impact these companies have made, you can't turn around and name a bunch of duds[1].

You start the list with mega successes (Android and YouTube are ubiqutous products that have made a huge impact on millions of people) and then finish up with failures and unproven startups. To be clear, I'm not saying anything about design cofounders. It's just that there's this weird implication in what you've communicated. You're sort of saying that all these companies are in the same league due to the skill of one of the founders. Something about that just doesn't sit right.

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[1] -

Sold in a talent acquisition after product failed: Hunch, Gowalla

Sold before they ever did anything: About.me

Niche community product: Forrst, ColourLovers, Foodspotting

Unproven product: Path

I hear you...this is only our first visualization (will probably do next one on a timeline etc, so you're point about league isn't really an issue)...this first piece is more about highlighting case studies we're examining (mega success and dud failures- I like all types of data)...hopefully this is also a challenge to the next generation of designers to step up and ship something of consequence in collaboration with other brilliant folks from different background like great engineers who have been doing it for decades in deep tech... design+tech entrepreneurship is still in it's infancy... I do know that we need to be proactively driving new ideas and not be so reactive. “They have checkins, and group coupons, and native apps, and just got a valuation of thirty billion; WE need to have checkins! We need group coupons! Bring on the native apps!” I hope future designer-entrepreneurs can be more proactive and present a state that doesn’t yet exist. Addressing latent needs ESPECIALLY in emerging markets and coming up re-framed business models for the other 99% of the population.

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