[dm2]

I was always under the impression that developers are also problem solvers, hence their ease of also coming up with an awesome enough idea to start a company.

Designers are artists. Once a designer does more than drawing and photoshop, they become a front-end developer. Using their primary craft of drawing, where is there to really go after that?

Developers have the advantage of being able to throw together a prototype of their web application and see if it's viable. Developers can also tackle the very difficult coding problems that can give a startup a competitive advantage.

[dasil003]

That's a superficial and overly narrow view of design. Design is more than graphic design or interior design. Fundamentally it's the creation of human experiences. Everything that humans build is designed. A designer is someone who specializes in considering how such a creation will interact with the users and world in the task for which it is designed.

In this regard a great designer is more qualified than a developer to create the vision for a startup. The developer's advantage is execution. Why programmers start companies is because they can create a product and launch it even if it looks like shit, and the problem it solves is pointless, and the marketing repels people, they can at least ship a product. A designer by contrast needs to have a technical co-founder or be well-funded.