[yonasb]

Great post. The only thing I disagree with is your distaste for the designer fund. I think helping designers build startups is a good thing. And it's also important to note the difference between visual design (UI) and UX. You can't create value without good UX. And good designers do both UI and UX. So design is important, the visual aspect not so much, before you have something ppl want

[fookyong]

You can't create value without good UX

Entirely incorrect. Read the Lean Startup. Value creation is 100% possible without any UX or anything tangible that the customer "sees" at all. A delivery pizza place provides value. I call them, they deliver pizza. There's no "UX" there beyond what already existed (my phone, a working phone line).

Too many people think the first thing that needs to be solved is how something looks or feels. It's not. You can solve a problem without any UX.

[danilocampos]

> I call them, they deliver pizza. There's no "UX" there beyond what already existed (my phone, a working phone line).

Give me a moment to finish making my Picard face, here.

The entirety of pizza delivery is user experience.

- Answering the phone with clarity and promptness

- Taking an order with accuracy and clarity

- Creating a pizza that tastes good while matching the customer's order parameters

- Not giving people diarrhea

- Estimating a delivery timeframe

- Delivering the pizza within that timeframe

Botch any one of those things and the experience of ordering the pizza sucks. Botch several and people will stop ordering from that restaurant. Food, in particular, is possibly the largest user experience challenge outside of software. Maybe toolmaking is bigger. But food and restaurants are way up there.

[fookyong]

danilocampos >

I think you have a fair point.

However it's important to remember that startups are out there to prove a core value proposition. Everything else, the UX on top of it - that can come later. After you've proven the core. It's all bullshit until then.

So say I'm starting a new pizza place. My value proposition: is pizzas in 10 minutes or less.

that is what I should be optimizing all my efforts around. if I can prove that people want and will pay for pizzas delivered in 10 minutes, even if they taste average, even if my phone etiquette is shitty, even if my delivery guys are smelly - then I know I have something as a startup. my core hypothesis has been proven correct.

then I can spend time working on the "UX" - the layers on top of that core that make the experience much more pleasant.

there are too many new startups obsessed with the layers and not with the core.