How to build a design team from scratch

Hey, I’m Shane.

Welcome to Design for Builders — a newsletter for founders, operators, and builders who want to level up their design skills and build better products.

If it’s your first time here, check out the previous issues on taste and designing experiences. They’ll give you a solid foundation for what we’re doing here.

This week: building a design team. Specifically, how to go from zero to your first full-time designer and set them up to actually ship great work.

Quick takeaways before we dive in:

• A good first designer has range: they can go from user flows to brand polish without blinking

• Your job doesn’t stop at hiring. Founders need to be design-literate to lead effectively

• Design culture starts before the designer arrives, and it compounds

• The founder-designer relationship is a force multiplier if there’s trust, clarity, and shared taste

Let’s get into it.

You need to be design-literate

As a modern builder or founder, being design literate is one of the best advantages you can have. Hiring a designer doesn’t mean you should check out of the design process and “outsource it fully to them”. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Now your job is to:

• Explain the vision clearly

• Set goalposts without over-specifying solutions

• Set the standard for quality and alignment

• Give high-quality constructive feedback quickly

If you can’t define what “good” looks like, your designers will constantly be stuck second-guessing. You’ll both waste time. You’ll both get frustrated.

Being design-literate doesn’t mean you need to draw boxes in Figma. It means you are now more likely to be able to:

• Spot inconsistencies

• Give feedback on clarity and intent

• Make judgment calls between clean vs. cluttered, delightful vs. overbuilt

Founders who stay involved and give a shit about design ship better products. It’s that simple.

Your first designer should be a generalist with taste

Your first designer is most likely the one to help you build a design system. You’re not just hiring for execution. You’re hiring someone to help shape the product with you.

This means they need range, not just deep skill in one narrow area. They should feel comfortable bouncing between:

• Talking to users about their pain points

• Figuring out user flows and product thinking

• Designing mockups or building prototypes fast

• Making brand decisions that shape your identity

• Working with the engineers to bring designs to life

They should also be opinionated. Not in a stubborn way, but in a way that shows they have taste and confidence in their thought processes. They should be someone who can say “this is the cleaner way to do it” without waiting for you to micromanage every pixel.

A good first designer should be someone who cares about craft, but is also willing to ship something imperfect but intentional. They’ll challenge your assumptions and offer better ones. And most importantly, they should enjoy the messy early stages of figuring things out.

Build the design culture early

As I’ve mentioned in the previous edition, having a great design culture is your internal moat.

If your company treats design as an afterthought of engineering or features, your designer will always be fighting an uphill battle. You want the design to feel like part of the product’s DNA, and not just the layer on top.

Start early by:

• Sharing design inspiration in team channels

• Give room for designers to try out-of-the-box, even sometimes crazy ideas

• Talking openly about what makes something feel “right” or “off”

• Treating visual clarity and UX as product decisions, not polish

You can hire the best designers in the world, but without an environment that appreciates design, they’ll flop. Build a culture around design, and you’ll attract design talents naturally.

The Founder-Designer Flywheel

The founder-designer relationship is one of the biggest levers for early-stage velocity. When it clicks, it feels like cheating.

You’re able to:

• Move fast because you trust each other’s instincts

• Iterate fast because you speak the same language

• Ship polished work because there’s clarity, not chaos

Nikita Bier tweeted about how having a full-time designer will accelerate your startup:

Designers don’t need you to be perfect. They need you to be clear to start the flywheel.

When that flywheel spins, it compounds: better design decisions → faster learning → stronger product → happier users → better word of mouth → easier hiring.

But it starts with you. If you care deeply about the product, your designer will too.

Building a design team isn’t just about hiring a good designer. It’s about setting the conditions for them to do great work.

Be the kind of founder a great designer wants to work wit. Then hire someone with taste, speed, and range — and build something beautiful together.

Cheers,
Shane

P.S. Forward this to a founder friend who’s thinking about hiring their first designer. Let’s build something amazing together