Thanks.
So, early stage, it is valuable--maybe not valuable enough to have one as a full partner with equal equity, but maybe.
The reason I say possibly not is because I know many of the "rock star" designers from YC companies now, and at least a few aren't feeling very important to the process or involved in the day-to-day development (and some have packed up and gone home). If you can't foresee significant design work throughout a long period of time, maybe an equal partner designer isn't the way to go.
So, great design is a huge value. It's up to you to decide if it is worth an equal stake (it's almost certainly worth some equity, if you can get someone good to work for equity and don't have the 10-15k it'll take to hire a good designer for a couple of weeks), and whether they'll be twiddling their thumbs in six months.
As Harj said, a designing hacker (even if the hacking is fair to middling--if the design skill is really strong) is a champ worth her weight in gold.
http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-design-in...
Good design and flow is critical, especially for consumers apps. I'd say that 2 of 3 of our founders consider design as one of our core competencies and I think its made a huge difference.
But even if its not a core competency, make it one of yours! Our 1 non-designer cofounder learned about and talked to other startups about design, and ended up coming up with our biggest design improvement to date - removing the whole "website" from the frontpage. If you go to Anywhere.FM, you'll notice we don't take you to a "website" and this change reduced our bouncerate by 50% (compared to the Alpha release). This certainly trumps most technical feats we've accomplished to date.
Finally, its good to have multiple opinions (but not get locked up in minor details), so that the UI targets a wide audience - not just the audience the designers are most in tune with. Its easy to target only yourself, and we probably still suffer from that today.
In my experience, it is incredibly valuable to use a designer with some coding experience. They appreciate the limitations of the medium.
Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML. Awesome book, does anyone has read it?
I've always liked designing things, so even though I'm no rockstar, what we've got is good enough (read: design that won't be noticed by the user--not horrendous, not stunning).
If I was just doing business stuff and my co-founder had to do design as well we wouldn't be getting anywhere fast. Good design takes time, but it doesn't have to be flashy. Find someone who understands usability (Fitts' Law) and knows HTML/CSS. Like everyone else has said, if they can hack, even better. I'd also add that if they like the b-side and understand what hacking involves (even if they can't do it well) they will be very useful to the team (read: deserve full equity).
Earth-shattering graphic design is out of easy reach for most of us, but designing simple to use interfaces doesn't take much more than careful thought and a desire to do so. A big part of what designers do just isn't necessary in a startup where the founders actually care about making things good already. Designers are often essential at larger companies, where the employees aren't motivated enough to give a lot of care to things like ease-of-use, flow, and beauty.
First the good news: Good designers aren't interested in working for equity in your brand new wholly unproven company.
Now the bad news: Good designers aren't interested in working for equity in your brand new wholly unproven company.
Good design is far more expensive than you think. And I believe you've severely underestimated it's value in a startup. (I've historically done so, as well. But I learn eventually.)
Good design doesn't cost anything if you do it yourself. Google did it for virtually nothing and beat Yahoo's horde of professionals. They're hardly alone. Maybe it's hard to tell from the way I talk about it but I think design is immensely valuable. I just think it's not some sacred craft that only people called designers can do.
It's not sacred, but if you don't spend some time studying good design (and learning what makes for bad design), you'll probably shoot yourself in the foot without knowing it. Even if you do, you still might shoot yourself in the foot.
The problem is that most people see Google as a great example of engineers doing design, but there was really /nothing/ to design. If an engineer managed to screw a single search field up, then that's just bad. (And, I have known engineers who've screwed up simple search fields.)
My recommended guideline here: as information increases in density and interaction increases in complexity, the need to have someone focus on design increases. Now, is this person a bona fide designer or one of the engineers that has some design skill? That's for the individual startup to determine.
Although there is very little info to design on Google's homepage that is because that is how they designed it - clear, simple, plain, minimalist, yet colourful, memorable and vibrant. They could have had all sorts of ad's or other corporate info on there but they chose the letterbox and logo (which their 25yr old $100,000 a year designer changes on a daily basis so there is a lot of design going on by someone who is regarded as being one of the best apparently).
Google, to my mind, has a whole load of design. Just because you see white and primary colours doesn't mean there is no design. It's like talking, the worlds greatest orators were not masters of articulation and words...... but of silence. The most powerful and effective tool in speaking is the use of silence and pauses. When you deliver the killer bottom line when pitching your startup leave a long pause after. The last thing you said reverberates in the listeners head, over and over. I would suggest that Google's minimalist design does the same thing to users - they remember the brand and site because they never got LOST trying to FIND what they were looking for. I believe these two word are two of the most important to successful search functionality.
I had to outsource my design to someone who produced her best work on my site (Quarrysell.com - please don't laugh I'm new to this game, am a one man band and operate in a niche market). The advertisers I have lined up love my Google white minimalist design because my design (and Google's) does not detract from their logo, advertising and banners i.e. my main source of income (and Google's). Design is bloody important in building a brand and allowing users to easily navigate your site.
Although design is best incorporated at the beginning I do not agree that a designer is integral to hashing out a phase one project, this is not opinion but experience I sadly speak from. Design is a big deep hole of time, money and particularities startup have neither the time nor funds for. Good and excellent designers are obsessive about the smallest of things and this can hinder building the house. My position: Once the foundations are solid, you have a roof over your head and windows to see out of then get the painters and decorators in.
Decent? $30/hour.
Good? $60/hour
Great? Whatever they want to charge.
http://programmermeetdesigner.com/ is a good place to get bids for a design. I got bids for a logo ranging from $25 - $600.
We expect to spend about $15-$20k, to start, and I'll be doing all of the heavy lifting of hooking things up--we just want to get HTML/CSS mockups done, with no actual work on integrating the style into our application or website. But we have a lot of stuff in our app. Heavy use of forms, vast swaths of information spread across hundreds of pages, etc. But then again, the pool of talent that we're wanting to work with is pretty much limited "famously good". If we're going to pay for it, we figure it might as well be as good as we can get. I've gotten much better over the past two years, as I've focused more on design and less on software development...so if we're going to pay rather than just let me tinker with it more, it's gotta be great.
As far as the graphic design that can easily and cheaply be outsourced, though even then you'd ideally want one or more founders with a good aesthetic sense to work with them.
Next round of Y Combinator starts in January, plenty of time to learn the mechanics of designing. Your already got a head start from the experience of personal preferences.
Paul Graham: Matters different amounts depending on the application. The solution Google uses is just to make pages very bare and functional. They have no design sense, but they try not to need it.