[codegeek]

Because in the beginning, design is not as important as validation and user experience. Classic example: Stripe. If you look at recent submissions on HN about them, a lot of comments have been about their awesome design. But Stripe became so huge because they made it so simple to accept payments online and focussed heavily on being developer friendly. I remember their tagline used to be "payments for developers". At that time, their design was ok not as shiny as they are now. But it didn't matter initially.

So yea, as long as you are solving a real problem for your users and making their life easy, they don't care. A different example: Craigslist. Still the same as ever.

Hardly a company or product fails just because of bad design. That is why too much investment on design upfront is not worth it.