For entrepreneurs, the "team" is of utmost importance. As uber-tweeter Dave McClure has pointed out out in his many presentations, including the not-so-tasteful ones, the team is the secret sauce.
The product might be killer, the market might be huge, the timing might be perfect, but without the "team" it will be an uphill battle for cash, customers and cachet.
And while attending the FutureM Bootcamp Marketing last week, I heard one of the best presentations on design I have ever heard. Leslie Bradshaw of Jess3 gave a slide presentation that simply blew me away. Now I'll admit that I cried at the end of E.T. so maybe making me emotional isn't so difficult, but if anyone could have shown me that slide presentation in 2001 when LandAndFarm.com was a free listing service maybe I would have bought Loopnet.com instead of selling to them, er, probably not, but who knows?
And her point, which I asked her about from the audience was my own naive question, "Are you serious that you should have a designer as a co-founder of your start-up?" And her answer was an emphatic yes.
And so I was having lunch with a developer/friend who builds mobile apps for brands like Tribe Hummus and we got to talking about our next startups. I pitched my two ideas for local cash-register-based loyalty systems for the smallest stores and car-based social networking and he pitched back his idea for an enterprise level location-based content platform for enterprises.
And we both agreed that the missing 3rd person was a designer. And then the realization struck that even though I've got some street cred from selling my company and I have a pretty strong understanding of UX and he has some major mojo/guru tech skills because he can whip up mobile apps like I can scramble eggs, a real designer (and I mean a UI/UX whiz with artistic talents) who has some tech knowledge would be a goldmine for our team.
And how much would that person be worth? Answer: a lot.
And how much would that person charge? Not enough.
So this is my prediction: soon we are going to see some status inflation among the best designers. Like Michael Lewis so correctly described in the Blind Side, the left tackle evolved when it's value protecting the quarterback emerged. The designer is the left tackle of start-ups. And maybe the analogy isn't perfect. The designer isn't really in the background, the designer isn't hidden, her work is right on the front page. But it seems the designer is still regarded as something you outsource, something you can "do later." But in our visually active world, where "engagement" and "interaction" are so important, the dedicated designer who doesn't write code, doesn't market, doesn't sell and doesn't deal with the numbers, but can talk with all those folks, is like a keystone for a team.
And there are some superstar designers. Those who are "in the know" already agree with this and have already stopped reading my blog post and are probably giggling that I'm just now figuring this out, but what can I do?
In terms of value, the designer is now where the left tackle was when Bill Walsh and the 49ers were coming into their own. There was a blog post by Ryan Junee that valued engineers in a start at between $1 million and $2 million. There will be a time and it may be soon when the designers and the UI gurus and the UX whizzes will be valued similarly and perhaps even more.
Because isn't design as important as anything else? Hasn't Apple proven that design is elemental in importance?
I remember buying my first iPod nano and thinking how beautiful it was, forgetting that it was just a device to suck my cash out through itunes. It really fit in my hand beautifully. It was sleek and easy to dial, even easier than my phone at the time. I was impressed. And then looking at competing MP3 players that had nearly the same look and feel as theWalkman from 20 years early, only smaller, well, we know who bought what.
So my next startup I hope to have a designer on board and I will be lucky to have one. Until then, my presentations will still be sucky and be in powerpoint. I deserve what I get.
