[gyardley]

Hiring a contract designer is never an optimization, whether you're bootstrapping or neck-deep in venture capital.

Startups are all about learning and iterating quickly. Your contract designer won't help you with that. When you need them to pump out the next iteration, they'll be working on another project and available in two weeks. No, you need those skills in-house.

If you can't persuade a designer to join your team (and man, this is hard when you're bootstrapping), the best course of action is to learn some these skills yourself. Even if it's slow, and even if it's hard.

Of course, this is exactly the same argument we've all made and read a million times before, except with s/developer/designer.

That 'ugh' feeling some of you are feeling at the prospect of learning to design? Yeah, that's the same way the guy spinning his wheels looking for a technical co-founder feels, when you tell him to learn to code. Still got to be done.