Designing Your Way to Product-Market Fit

Hey, I’m Shane.

Welcome to the third issue of Design for Builders, a newsletter for founders, builders, and operators who want to understand design and apply it to their product.

First time here? Would highly recommend you to read the previous issues: How to Develop Killer Taste and Design Experience, Not Features

This week I want to talk about design and the holy grail of Product Market Fit. How are the two related? Can just having good design help you to find PMF faster?

Quick takeaways before we start:

• Good design leads to faster adoption, quicker feedback loops, rapid iteration, and even better design

• Delightful design is your baked in moat, both externally and internally.

• If you want organic growth, great design is your best marketing investment

“Ship it ugly” is not an option

If you're an early-stage startup, you have exactly one mission: find the holy grail called Product Market Fit.

The old startup wisdom teaches us to not be afraid of “shipping ugly”

Move fast, break things, slap together an MVP, and ship it. That’s what 2000s to 2010s startups do.

That’s not the reality now.

Taking the time to craft thoughtful design might feel like slowing down at first, but it actually speeds up your path to figuring out if your product has PMF or not.

You should strive to create a Minimum Viable Experience (MVE) instead.

Traditional MVP thinking focuses on building a version of the product that simply “works.” But with MVE thinking, you identify the smallest set of interactions that must be well-designed to validate your core value proposition.

The idea is to focus design efforts on moments that directly confirm or challenge product-market fit hypotheses.

This isn’t just for early-stage startups. Even established companies are constantly seeking PMF as they launch new product lines and features.

If you don’t prioritize design and user experience from Day 1, you’re only prolonging your path to PMF.

Good design = faster adoption + feedback cycle.

In the early days, your startup survives on user feedback. You want as many early adopters as possible. The faster you validate assumptions, the faster you'll find PMF.

Good design reduces friction, meaning more users will complete onboarding and actively use your product. More users = more feedback.

But it’s not just about volume. Good design also improves the quality of feedback you get.

When users aren’t distracted by a confusing UI or a frustrating experience, their feedback focuses on the core problem your product solves—not just QOL complaints like, “I don’t know how to return to the previous screen.”

Aiming for “good design” at launch doesn’t mean everything has to be pixel-perfect from day one. That’s pretty much impossible, and not to say unnecessary.

But before launch, you need to ensure your app delivers a smooth, enjoyable experience:

• Does onboarding guide users smoothly to the “aha” moment?

• Can users navigate the app without confusion?

• If they find a bug, can they easily contact you?

It’s about making usage second nature. As people continue interacting with your product, they build habits. When your product feels good to use, users naturally:

• Use it more regularly

• Explore and adopt more features

• Recommend it to others

• Provide clear, actionable feedback

If you can deliver this experience from the start, you’ll drive faster adoption and higher-quality feedback. The only way is up.

Good design is your baked in moat

You’ve heard it thousands of times from startup founders and VCs:

“Your startup needs a moat.”

My hot (warm?) take: the only reliable moat is your design taste.

I know what you’re thinking—this is rich coming from a design studio founder. But I really believe it.

AI and no-code tools have made functionality easy to replicate. That means the biggest differentiator you can invest in is your taste, creativity, and opinion.

Here’s how you can leverage design in your product:

• Create a unique visual identity
  The goal is to make users instantly associate your product with your distinctive style. Perplexity and Gumroad are great modern examples.

• Design delightful user flows
  Make competitors’ products feel clunky or outdated by comparison. Identify the worst part of their UX and double down on designing a better solution.
  Example: Ramp vs. Bill.com—if you’ve ever used Bill.com, you know.
  Plus, Ramp was one of Turbo’s clients this year ;)

• Introduce novel interactions (high-risk, high-reward)
  This is Hard Mode. You can create a moat by introducing new ways for users to interact with your product, but it’s tough because it requires changing user habits. If you pull it off, you can redefine the whole industry.
  Examples: Snapchat’s disappearing stories, TikTok’s infinite scrolling.

This moat doesn’t just protect you externally—it shapes your internal culture too.

I’ll probably talk more about this in future issues, but having a strong culture from day one helps you attract talent that aligns with your company’s values.

Pro tip: when looking for design inspiration, don’t limit your inspiration to a single platform own platform.

• Web builders: Grab your phone. Notice how the best mobile apps keep screens simple, taps minimal, and interactions effortless. Steal those patterns.

• Mobile builders: Open your laptop. Great web apps clearly organize dense content, multi-step flows, and deeper interactions. Borrow those insights.

Good design is your growth machine.

In Chaos Monkeys, Antonio Garcia Martinez famously wrote:

“Marketing is like sex, only losers pay for it.”

Harsh? Sure. But for most pre-PMF startups, there’s truth in it.

Paid acquisition is hella expensive. Relying on ads before finding product-market fit is risky as hell—not to mention you’re basically at the mercy of the ad provider’s algorithm.

Instead, bet on design-driven growth.

Delighted users naturally talk about your product. They tweet about it, recommend it to friends, and champion it everywhere they go.

Take Linear, for example. They spent almost nothing on early marketing.

Instead, they obsessed over UX: clean interfaces, frictionless workflows, intuitive interactions. Developers loved it, talked about it, and shared it online, turning Linear into one of tech’s favorite new tools—all through word-of-mouth.

A product that’s easy to use, intuitive, and enjoyable naturally generates buzz. Without you having to push for it.

Getting to product market fit is a journey, but focusing on user experience and design is part of the vehicle that’ll take you there. Product isn’t just about features anymore. It’s about experience.

Great design reduces friction, gets users to the aha moment faster, and makes them stick around. It’s one of the hardest moats to replicate, and one of the biggest levers you can pull.

If you’re still searching for PMF for your product or a specific feature you’re launching, think about “how can I design the best experience for users?”

Cheers,
Shane

P.S. If you liked this, forward it to a builder friend. Let’s build something amazing together.

Anyway, here’s some amazing design work I found this week