 Hi everyone, so yeah, my name is Kari and I'm here to talk about product design for startups. I think this talk will be mostly, I think, a little bit geared towards founders. I thought it might be like, I think product design is a big topic. I wanted to narrow it somehow that we can get to some like practical level. I think it's really interesting to actually come back to talk about this because I was like it's lost in nine years ago and I was also kind of like talking about the same topic. So it's fun to come back to this. Since then, like the guys introduced me, I've been doing a few things. So I founded this company, Kip, which was in Y Combinator back in 2012. And then we joined Coinbase and then was also at Airbnb and now at Linnar. And I think like the one thing with this, all of these companies I think have in common that all of them like value design very high. And I think like it's with Coinbase and Airbnb's case, like you can see the success, I think with Linnar still remains to be seen. Just like since this is about design, I thought I should put some visuals here. So at Coinbase, I joined as the first designer. What it means that you kind of, I was the only designer as well, so you kind of have to do everything. So I started from the brand to and also made the websites and the products. And then at Airbnb, I kind of work mostly on the visual design. So Airbnb is a big company, there's a lot of designers. You kind of have to think about like what is the channel direction because designers might have different ideas and like it doesn't like, like if there's too many ideas, the app becomes like less coherent. And so I work on this visual design language, which we always updated every year and then also built this design system to kind of support it. I also worked on this serial typeface, which is custom typeface or a font for Airbnb. So there was also like some brand work. And now with Linnar, we started two and a half years ago. We had three co-founders and I was one of the co-founders and also the designer. So again, like I had to start from zero and start designing like from the very beginning. So today I want to like touch a few topics about startup product design. So first let's just like look like what is the design, like what kind of advantages design can create. And then secondly, talk about like what kind of different designs are there for different companies. And then also about hiring designers and also just like what is it in practice? Like maybe sometimes people like when you look at something like existing company like Airbnb or something, you see like there's a lot of stuff designed and it might be like hard to understand like where to start. So let's just like look at some of the practical things. So maybe this is obvious to some of you, but I think I feel like we should still talk about it. That I think like startups can be like design can be very big advantage to startups. And I would say like design is as important, like almost as important as engineering. And I say like almost as important because I think like it's still more important that you have a product that works than just have nice designs for a product. I think it can be really huge advantage early on. It's like I think the reason is that like a design doesn't necessarily, good design doesn't necessarily require a lot of resources. You can make a very good design very deeply. I mean like one person can do a very good design and they can do a lot of design. So that's why it's also like you are not losing like in engineering or some other like roles. There might be like more need for more resources to build something bigger, but design it can be like done easier. And I think like today is also there's so many startups out there. So design can help you to stand out. So let's talk about more practical terms. So I always think about startups are about growth because like you start from zero. You need to keep growing. You need to get users and customers. And what growth essentially usually is that you need to acquire people. You need to get them use the product and then you need to keep them using the product. If you lose them then like again like you don't have those users and customers. So let's look at the different stages. So acquisition I think that design can help there. Like just do like it's like you can create interest. Like if something looks people are like visual and like when you see something that looks cool or interesting. I think it kind of like attracts people to pay more attention. And that's always something like it's that's like one of your challenges as a startup. Like people are not paying attention. So design can help with that. It's also like helps with the kind of clarity of the product. I think like if you have a good designer, they can help you to like clarify like the workflow. So it's just the onboarding that people understand the value of the product better. And then also obviously if the product is well designed, people likely will use it more. If they use it more likely they will keep using it. And that way like the design can help in all of these steps. If you don't have design or a good design or you haven't invested in it. You're probably creating friction in all of these steps which then hinders your growth as a startup. So that's just like a very basic example with our company. So we launched it a couple of years ago. We just put a website and a blog post out there. And we did spend some time on the design but it wasn't like something like we spent like months on it. But it was like I think like people found it really interesting. And so that's why we were able to get 10,000 users on our wait list after like two months. And I think that's really good start when you start building a product. And then you can start pulling those people in when you're ready. Even today we still have people that come to our product just because they like the design. They don't necessarily have any other justification for it like in their heads. But they're just like yeah I like it so that's why I use it. And I think it's great like I don't care why people become our customers. I just care that they become our customers. So again I think there's like an example of how it can help. Okay so let's talk about like not every company is the same. Not every product is the same. So I have this like a way of thinking about this which is basically like you have this like a product design fit or design product fit. Like similar you have a product market fit. So like every product needs like a different level of design or different level of different kind of design and also a different level of like investment into the design. And I think like the other so one is like the type of product. The other thing is like maybe you operate in an industry or like in a space where you there there might be some like one thing is like trust might be like very important. Like this could be like usually like financial things or health related things that the you need to really create trust and like that's also like a problem design can help to solve. And like so after this framework which is basically like you can think about your product and see if it's is it more like a back end on front and heavy. And like basically a back end heavy is something like I don't know you have some kind of machine learning I don't know platform and most of the stuff happens in like most of the value of the product is in in the back end that whatever the code does. And then like a front and heavy example is something like an email client or a calendar where the back end is fairly basic but you people need to really use the interface like interface is the product and not that not the back end. And then I think there's also the other aspect is like how much the people need to use the product. So the more more frequent usage there is like if the usage is daily or multiple times in a day you probably need to invest and it's a front and heavy application you probably need to invest a lot in design. If it's something like I don't know it's somewhere back end product maybe people I don't know file like submit their taxes every year maybe that's less needed there but generally I think like every startups need design but there's also like different levels so like how much you should invest. Yeah so let's look at the example Coinbase Coinbase so back in 2004 14 crypto space was like pretty kind of technical it's kind of hard to understand I think it's still hard to understand but I think specifically back then and then they also was a crypto was new it's it's Coinbase also like wanted to build this like a bank basically that like people buy like exchange their their dollars to bitcoin or something and then they store it at Coinbase so which means like it's it needs a lot of trust like you are like first trusting giving them money and then you also trusting them like keeping your money safe and then also like we just believe that like we cannot like Coinbase cannot be successful if crypto doesn't become successful or mainstream so that was like the thing we tried to solve. So like just like a basic example look at the website so this is like when I started there this is how it looked it's it's not bad like I think like overall like the I think the product was pretty clear it's just like visually it kind of looks like a weekend project and it doesn't it doesn't feel like you want to like like put like $10,000 into this website and like and they I join as a first like only designer so I kind of had to like start working on this just to like I don't just to jump to to today so back then like what our problem was like well how can we make a make a platform that people can really understand and use and today like I look at the financials and it looks like they report that they have 33 million users on the platform and 10,000 institutions I think I could read somewhere that like third of the population in us has used crypto somehow so I think like definitely that the mainstream happened and I think Coinbase like played a part in it and I think also like the design in the end played part with Coinbase though like how how we got people into this space then like another example linear it's like a very different app so it's more like a tool it's an issue issue tracker and a software development project management tool so it's something like we think like for example an engineer should use it every day maybe multiple times a day so what we our thinking was like we really need to invest into the experience we really need to make it like work fast and make it make so that the experience is like clear and like people aren't confused and like that way we can get people to use it more and that way the the whole tool is more valuable for the company that uses it so we we had to like really focus on both on the like the design but also the implementation of the design so yeah let's see if the video works yeah so for example we have like this like a command menu it's like some apps now have this like it's basically like a quick way to access a lot of features everything in the app you can do with keyboards you can you can select things but if you don't want to use a keyboard you can also use a mouse everything also happens instantly so there's no waiting it's also works offline so it doesn't matter if your internet connection is bad or like you are on a plane you can still use it and overall with the design which is one that to make it very clear and simple and so that people don't feel like they have this like when they come to the tool that there's this like uh I don't know they need to use a lot of mental energy just to understand what's happening because in the end what we're trying to help people to do is do their work and we kind of want that the tool like helps with that but doesn't get into the way um okay so let's move on um so that's like a couple examples like different kind of companies solving different problems uh when I usually talk about product design usually the founders then like oh well like should we hire a designer um I said like yes you should hire a designer um I think like you should hire it as early as you can usually probably after a seed round or something like once you have some money to hire someone ideally you have a designer as a co-founder but that's not always the case but you should like try to hire someone like fairly soon I think the reason is like it's like it that person can really help you to build and figure out the product and also like make it more successful so that's why I think it's like important to hire early um I don't recommend contracting like design to freelancers or agencies or something um similar to like I don't recommend like outsourcing to engineering you the problem is that like while they might do like a nice design for you they don't still like really understand what you're trying to do and like you probably don't understand it either that well but it's your job to figure it out um and then like once you start working on it you start figuring out more but if you don't work on it internally your team doesn't like do the designs or they don't work on on the product it it you don't get these learnings so that's why I don't recommend like as a last resort like you really need some design you can always ask someone to do it but ideally you'll hire someone for this um you know then like people ask like well I don't know where do I find a designer like I don't know what what should I hire for so um I think like first of all like I think I recommend people looking for someone who has a product design background um I think you just need to understand there's different kinds of designers there's graphic designers like visual designers there can be UX designers or or like brand designers so it's it's not like every designer is the same that their skill set is the same um it doesn't mean that these designers can't do product design but I think it's if they haven't done any product design then they probably like they need to learn a lot um which then like makes makes things harder um so ideally you'll find someone who has a little bit of experience in this um also like I don't recommend people getting too too kind of hyped or impressed by big company names like yeah this person worked at Facebook or Google or something it doesn't exactly mean that they are a good fit for your startup um the reason is that like large companies um the way design works in a large company is very different than how design works in startups in startups you just try to get things done like you need to design everything like the whole product in the large companies a lot of times the designers are focusing on a very small area and working on a very small kind of visual uh areas or just like features in general so that that's why I don't necessarily like recommend that or I mean I don't think like again like you cannot hire from these large companies I would just like treat it as a flag that like okay like we need to check like in the interviews you just need to ask them like okay what kind of design did you do and try to get a sense that could they be a good fit um if you don't know about design yourself you don't have like that background maybe you can try to use your friends that are designers or try to use your investors or try to ask your investors who do they know any designers to to talk to um so I think like always when you're building a company if you don't know something ask someone to help you and I think like you always find people can help you um just do like it's very simple example like how do you interview designers um so one thing is yeah you should interview them like you asked about their background similar to any other role um just try to understand like what what they actually done and like what kind of team they worked on how many people were in the team um what kind of accomplishments they have done and I think the next step often you can ask the designer to do a portfolio review usually designers have a portfolio they basically or they can create one and they basically just show the work that they um have done and like you let them present that to you like to explain like why they did certain things and like and then you can see their style and and also understanding in that and then you can ask questions to like why did you choose this direction or like how do you feel about it now like would you change something later like and that way you can kind of like get a sense like what is their experience um the third step which is like sometimes I don't know if it's it's not always possible but you can try to ask them like do some work um at linear we've been doing this work trials where we ask people to um work with us on a project for a couple days but we will pay for that time um so it kind of like a market rate pay for that like uh we pay for that time um at Airbnb we ask them to do like some home assignments um I think as a startup it might be sometimes hard to ask people to do this because like you I don't know if someone is applying to Airbnb and we ask them like you should do an assignment they're like okay I will do an assignment but as a startup you don't always have that leverage um but I think like the other thing you could do is just to ask them like let's let's hop on a call let's look at some website or some product out there talk about it like how they would change it or what kind of things they would do to make it better and then you can kind of see like what's their style or like how they approach problems um and so that that can be useful to get a sense um and it's just like a set two expectations I think like like if you're hiring someone to a startup I think usually they should start contributing as soon as possible um I think sometimes there might be like maybe some designer worked in a large company and usually take months to get anything started because you need to do this research and whatever um with the startup you don't need to have that luxury you kind of have to set the expectations like yeah like we can research things but we also need to like do stuff so we can do both at the same time I usually as a startup you talk to people you build something you talk to them again um and so I think like generally my expectation would be like a designer should in a couple of weeks start producing something and not be like well I need to research this topic for like six months um because then obviously you will be just wasting six months um so it's better to get started faster um okay so let's talk about the um what is what is it like in practice like what is startup design yeah there's all kinds of like you can read blog posts or I don't know books about like design and there's a lot of things you can like how you can do design um I just try to like in startups I often tell designers who join startups and also founders that like don't just like over don't overthink it like it's not in the end that I don't know I'd say like complicated um like you just need like the startups are often like you make something then you realize this was like this was good or bad and then you like make another version and maybe that's better or worse so you always need to like make new versions so that's why like don't try to like get everything perfect and in the beginning you just need to kind of like keep moving as and like as you keep moving you keep learning more and then you can improve things um so like few things you probably need as a startup so like you need some kind of brand it's probably obvious you need some kind of logo or name but again like don't get kind of hung up on it like just decide a name if you don't find anything amazing like just decide something and just go with it like it's in the end the name doesn't matter that much you can always change it later too if you want to um and like brands are also something like in the end like even if you have the best logo out there like you still don't have a brand the brand is something that happens over time when people see you like your company doing something like they the the brand is formed in in people's minds it's not in your I don't know website or or in in the in the slide deck or something um so again like I think like it's just for for startups I would just do a very simple brand or logo and get get started and kind of move on um so a couple of examples of again Coinbase this was kind of like the logo initially it's kind of I don't know it's fine um it's a little kitschy I think it's like very literal it's like coin like it's a coin the name is coinbase and it's like a stack of coins so it's like a base of coins um so so I think like it it wasn't I didn't enjoy it so um I just propose like maybe it was just like just take the word and put it make it blue and then remove the coin stack and make it make it simple and the company actually like managed to I think use basically use this logo until up to the IPO um so it was it was good enough for that so I always think like I don't think you should you do you don't need to do anything like super like complicated or try to like spend months on figuring out some kind of logo in the end doesn't really matter um and like it starts more important things than for you uh just the example like from linear brand so again I think it's very simple like name we just wanted something technical something like progressives there's like some kind of direction to it um and then the logo is like it's a circle that is kind of completing so it's kind of symbolizing some kind of progression um and and then like you just need a logo that can work in uh also in one color so make sure that there's no like I don't like putting like gradients on logos and stuff um and then you just need to choose like what is your brand color are you are you blue red yellow I don't know whatever um and then just choose something going to change it like you don't have to like spend months on like again like choosing in color it's just do something you kind of feel like works um and then you probably need to like think about okay how does the logo is represented in an app or somewhere or like an app icon um usually even if you don't have a mobile app you still probably need this kind of like a squareish um symbol uh for different things and then just like pick a typeface it could be very basic like we use intern uh it's it's not it's it's like pretty standard a lot of people use it so it's again it's not like a huge thing you need to spend time on so this is like basically what you need for the brand and then you can kind of move on um the website so like you as a startup you need a website um again like there's I think there will be different iterations as your company grows you don't have to like start your company and then like spend I don't know like build like 10 pages the likelihood is like probably like you don't know enough in the very beginning to even make that kind of website successful so so you just need to start with something and keep learning and adding more so I just think there is like this different levels which is like a waitlist level and then um like a launch site and then like eventually you grow more and you have like more more things to talk about um just do example like when we announced the company it's the website was pretty much this um there was like a headline a subtitle a little screenshot it wasn't even a full screenshot and I like a place you can enter your email and that that was it that was like for several months it was like that and it worked fine um then like when when we started like getting closer to the launch we started like adding stuff like we went once we had more features we wanted to start to show those so we added like bigger screenshots more like I don't know some feature highlights um some something about the team I think it's useful early on to show that there's actual real people working on it um and then like again like when we're getting good at the launch basically we use the same site but change the waitlist button into a signup button um and then just like improve that content again like I had some logos because now we had customers so we could do that um and just like highlighted different different kind of features and testimonials um yeah and then the growth like what we have today it's like again like same similar stuff we've been just like adding more like improving what we have uh talking more about the features and and and yeah again testimonials um yeah so that that was the website like I just understand that like there is different stages so like you don't have to like start from here you can start very small and just like keep keep moving to to that direction um so if you don't spend like I would say like don't spend a lot of time on brand or website early on like the more main focus should be the product um and so spend your time there I don't have a lot of advice for that like in this presentation as I think like every product is a little bit different so it's it's kind of hard to give like very generalized um advice on that um but it's general advice is that like talk to the users as much as you can like make something give it to them see if they use it or not the ask if they don't use it ask them like why not um try to like try different ideas and like it's it's a lot of times as a startup you might like even our company linear like the first design wasn't the best so we had to change it a couple of times um other tip I have is like early on it might be a good idea to do this design system it helps like kind of make the engineering and design faster and design system is basically that you you kind of quantify these elements of design so there's like colors and type phases and and stuff like that that can really speed up the execution so that's why I recommend it so that was it um there's a lot stuff about product design but just to I don't know wrap it up basically I think like design is an advantage for startups you should hire um every company has a little different need for product design so you need to think about that and then like you when you hire um you probably should hire a product designer fairly soon um and then in the practice don't just like don't spend months on trying to perfect things just like get moving so that was it so thank you