Design for Startups by Garry Tan (Part 2)

now's the super practical section of how

to find and choose designers we can get

through this really quickly happy to

answer questions afterwards about it but

you know the basic questions we always

get asked is you know well when when and

how the reality of it is there are so

many ways to answer this but this is

just you know super boilerplate advice

it's that preceeds seed and probably pre

a you still need a co-founder probably

to do it and then you could probably get

by with a little bit of consulting by

series a you should probably unless you

truly have nothing that has a user

facing element which is rare I mean even

developer api's today you know I would

argue that you need a developer API

designer who sort of runs through this

whole process but just for a developer

experience is incredibly valuable

that's make-or-break for you know even

highly technical products you know that

that's when you should really start

thinking about your first hire and then

you know by Series B what you really

should think about is how do you hire a

team a lot of people reach series B and

they're actually you know they're still

at the first higher stage and the

difficult part is if you actually have

1015 engineers and you're trying to hire

that first designer and you don't have

you're not going to hire a team that's

actually like a little bit of a

nightmare for a designer to work at

which makes sense actually to be the

only person on that whole team in charge

of design and you versus 20 engineers is

a very scary thing for a designer so

this might be a little outdated but this

is you know sort of what I've always

used in the past they're just websites

online to sort of find designers so it

dribbles is incredible portfolio you can

get a lot out of LinkedIn look for you

know companies in your space that have

done designed very very well and you can

just very point-blank start reaching out

to them behance crop I mean all of these

are websites and you should just go

check out AIGA even has a little

database of member designers on there

when I'm thinking about hiring people

directly for a full-time role or even

for contract there are a bunch of

schools that have worked well for me C

muh

di NYU MIT RISD Parsons Stanford this is

really not a comprehensive list and

frankly there are so many incredibly

good designers you know who have never

been to a Design School in terms of

finding consultants there's really two

paths here one is to go ahead and find

an individual so you know it turns out

that there are a lot of people who you

can kind of use this as a way to recruit

them so some of the best folks they

actually really like to work on a lot of

different projects all of the time and

you know there's actually a very large

pool of individuals for basically

individual consultants and they're hard

to get and you might have to email a lot

of them but you can reach out you can't

hire them as temp consultants and if

there's a really good fit that could be

a way to get to know them to come on

board a really cool trick that I've

heard for people who just need low cost

like logo design and visual design

there's actually an incredible number of

people out there in the world who are

not first world designers and they're

totally available on 99designs Fiverr I

think this is not you know they're

probably a bunch of other places like

that the trick that I've heard that you

could use is you can actually take your

job put it on one of these job boards

and then don't just do it for you know

one don't don't just hire one job you

could hire 20 jobs and then look at the

output of those 20 different people and

then personally befriend the person who

does some of the best work and you'll

find people in you know all around the

world Philippines Thailand Eastern

Europe everywhere real I mean Africa

Asia Europe like you know even the

United States people who are incredibly

talented who you know actually but

they're just starting out in their

careers where they don't know how to

actually get great jobs and you could be

that way too that they learn about

startups you know design firms they're

just so many you know the difficulty

with design firms is you kind of have to

find one that is willing to work with

startups and

you know many of them the bread and

butter for the best design firms truly

is working with Fortune 500 companies

for outrageous sums of money so it can

be very difficult to find ones that will

work with startups you know they get

labs is the one out of DC that I use the

most but they're you know our giant

direct directories and frankly referrals

are sort of your best bet and then I

want to call out a company that just

graduated from YC a few weeks ago called

play-doh design their URL is use

play-doh calm you should definitely

reach out to them I think that they do a

very very amazing job so how do you

actually attract a designer to work at a

start-up and you know really sort of the

ideal at Series A or even where you're

at right now is like you know if you are

a truly a consumer focused company you

kind of need a co-founder on there who

can actually run this for you but later

on especially you know and if you're a

three or four person team you can

usually find one

ideally unicorn to come join and give

them you know a much more senior role

that that'll be fairly important at

series a but once you do have a larger

team of five to ten engineers it gets

really scary for a designer who's used

to working with teams work working for a

design firm or working at you know um

via Facebook or one of the large tech

companies like they're used to sitting

with other people who spend all of their

time thinking about all of the things

that we were just talking about with

wireframes and users and personas and so

it can be incredibly scary for those

designers to come and work for you much

later stage if you don't plan to hire a

team that is diversified that you know

that you know it just gives them a

really good day-to-day you know and then

at the end of the day like being able to

be very crisp about what those roles are

that's the other part of hiring a team

that's incredibly important it's going

to be very very hard to find a unicorn

but often you can break it down by the

exact things that I mentioned like

they're incredibly good PM's who have

great resumes who have great backgrounds

who you know that's one coherent role

interaction designers sometimes they

can't make

things that are pretty but they are

incredibly empathetic they're able to

think through you know they're great

writers they're incredible communicators

and that's what you would look for in

that rule and finally visual design

that's probably the part that is that

you know oh yeah but it's often stands

on its own it doesn't have to and so

it's just a different skill set and then

really quickly I mean it's actually very

effective for startups who want to hire

design teams to actually write about it

content marketing works extremely well

social media works incredibly well and

you know if you're all engineers but

you're already thinking about this and

talking through a lot of the terms that

I was talking about well that's a

culture fit for designers because you

know that's basically what they want

they want executives or workplaces or

founders who understand and speak their

language and so that's why I encourage

you guys to be very open with do it

yourself to do it to understand these

things because even if you don't do it

in you know down the road you're

actually far better at evaluating

managing and working closely with people

who do and who are very good at it how

do you actually interview these designer

as well this is typically what I

examined you know do a quick phone

screen at the end a like it's actually

you know no matter how beautiful a

portfolio is it's just so hard to work

with people who have sort of their own

vision that cannot communicate and so

the phone screen it's really all about

you know great communication skills I

think that's incredibly essential and

then when they actually come and meet

you in the team you know actually have

them walk through the hard decisions the

trade-offs like we spend a lot of time

about product design you want to see

exactly that kind of thought about

personas about prioritization what are

the difficult trade-offs because there

always are in every type of product you

could design and finally I recommend who

whichever founder is has been doing the

design or the product you know you've

already been solving problems that you

might have so the key thing there is if

you've already spent your you know

2,000 hours thinking about a given

problem you know it's the best for you

to actually spend time walking through a

candidate over and over again and just

to make sure that you think through

these things the same way that they do

so you can read this later but you know

it's pretty straightforward you know

think about design you don't want people

who're complainers actually it's pretty

common you know you want someone who's

empathetic and listens to your needs is

you know it's usually bad for someone to

talk about themselves a lot and so you

know going back to the empathy point

that's incredibly important you know the

funniest thing that I like to use is

when someone's when I ask them a design

question if they just go to the

whiteboard and just start drawing they

fail because wait why didn't you ask

about the users who's it for what's the

problem and so you know these are just

guidelines there's so many ways to

interview you know I if you don't have a

really good design leader on your team I

highly recommend that you go to a friend

or someone who you do respect who can do

this stuff to just be like sort of a

final check before you do hire someone

so you know these are a bunch of books

that I've sort of referred to throughout

the talk this is just a starting point

this is far from comprehensive but you

know if you bought every single one of

these books and read it that you know

front to back you would be a pretty good

designer

maybe I hear a bunch of links that you

should probably read afterwards - you

know taste from makers is one of these

PG essays that you know I think not a

lot of people talk about but it's

incredibly timeless so I highly

recommend that and then these are links

that are very specific about you know

how do you write a PRD what's your first

wireframe and then these other websites

we just really really like because

there's so much there that you know this

field is incredibly deep so thank you so

much for spending and making it all the

way to the end of this talk it's an

hour-and-a-half 90 minutes we made it

through a hudner of four slides so thank

you for sitting with me I will leave you

with just one final thought and it's

truly that you know what we're talking

about with a start-up design is only one

of this three-legged stool and your

startup your startup success truly lies

at the intersection of all of these

things so thank you so much thank you

for spending time with me I know that

was a lot so the question is how

important is an about Us page I mean

yeah this isn't necessarily a design

thing I actually really think it's

important in that going back to our you

know moment where we were talking about

how alone we are as in this in this you

know sort of product Baron product

landscape you know you just feel so

alone and the about Us page is the one

place where you as founders can tell

your story like everyone is spending so

much time trying to be incredibly I mean

they're trying to imitate Microsoft

they're trying to be Google right and

you know you should embrace how powerful

it is that you're trying to do this

thing and being a real human being

answering emails and putting your name

on the website I mean I would argue that

that's why one of the big reasons why

coinbase was so successful I mean Brian

Armstrong very early on he was probably

the only person in the whole Bitcoin

world who was willing to put their name

you know the address like I mean just

basic things to make it an incredibly

real real thing so I you know I think

about us is very important for your

relationship with your customers and

that's not a design thing yes

how do you ask questions that really let

you accurately see your user there's a

lot of times you know you might be doing

a user interview and you feel like

they're not yeah so I guess the question

is how do you actually well you know how

do you properly ask questions to sort of

get the story of your user you know the

hard part here is there's not really one

way to do it I think it really does come

back to being a good interviewer and

thinking through I mean asking

open-ended questions is actually a

really good way to do it it's just you

know tell me about your day and like oh

you know tell me about you can even ah

seize on emotion because the best

problems to solve were actually

incredibly emotion emotional ones it's

like I get frustrated when blah or I get

mad when blah right like those are a lot

of very very strong you know going back

to you know I think Jeff might have

taught me this actually just purely that

um you know you really want to look for

things there you know hair on fire

problems you know things that actually

but you know get people upset you know

like emotion it can be an incredibly

powerful and good thing so open-ended

questions and look for emotion yes yeah

so first question is about prototyping

and you know the I have a confession to

make

I have not done a lot of prototyping

simply because I am I'm always in such a

rush to get the code done that the

second I know what I want to build I

just build it and then I ship it and

then I'll just do it live and so I

haven't personally gotten a lot of use

out of prototype prototyping but I know

that it's an incredibly valuable tool

and that's just a weird weird one for me

because I'm just always I would rather

just ship the thing and have

be out there yeah and then sorry the

second yeah so the question is you know

if you know a problem but you haven't

found the solution you know the hard

part there is like it's not totally

clear to me that design can solve it you

know what you describe maybe is either a

business problem or a tech not

technology problem you know it sometimes

is a design problem if there's you know

it's I don't know I mean the hard part

is these things are so squishy right

like if it's a business problem then you

don't have distribution people don't

know they have the problem you can't get

in front of them or if it's a if it's a

technology problem then it's like I mean

yeah how do we actually build the thing

and if we're not capable of doing it

then design can't solve it right how

about you just keep building things

until you get it right

do what Jeff said over here yes please

[Music]

the question is are there places where

you should maintain your distance I

can't think of any at the moment there

probably are I mean it was a really big

advantage for them to you know be out in

the open I could imagine being if it's a

incredibly competitive and if you want

to be secretive there are cases where

you don't want to be that open and that

does happen especially for you know

something that's easily copied or

something that you know is incredibly

enterprise focus so it's not important

for a lot of people to know about it

those are the main scenarios where I

think secrecy turns out to be very

important but most people tend to err on

the side of more secrets secrecy than

less you know the standard YC ISM around

this that I very much believe

you know whenever you're creating

something new you're not competing

against all of the other people out

there you're only competing against

obscurity you're you're competing

against like the back button and so to

the extent that that's true being as

open as possible getting as many people

to know about you as possible and being

a human being and having that interplay

that's really good

question is god is controversy I mean it

depends on the type of a controversy you

know one of the funniest examples of me

giving very bad advice and me very being

very relieved that the founder did not

take that advice was a company called

Soylent so they came in through YC they

were working on something totally

different in networking equipment and I

sat down with them in this room for

office hours and they said great news we

have this incredible we have you know

all of these orders people love this

thing oh by the way we're gonna stick

with the name Soylent and I said please

please don't call it that do you know

what that means haven't you seen the

movie and it turns out that you know the

entire reason why they were able to get

probably a billion dollars worth of

earned you know free advertising the

reason why they have an incredibly

powerful business today is purely

because they found exactly the right

kind of controversy 90% of people who

love food hear about it and say this is

terrible I hate it in fact they hate it

so much there at dinner and their top

telling everyone they know about it and

then ten percent of people hear about it

and they're like oh my god I need that

now so there are cases where controversy

can be incredibly powerful

they're sorry thank you guys

you