The Hard Thing Is Now Easy

When the hard thing becomes easy, something else becomes the new hard thing.

Building software used to be the hard thing. Now anyone with enough resourcefulness can ship something. Yes, because of AI. Language models will continue to make the technical execution of software more automated, more abstracted, more available—and more commoditized.

Models and the tools sitting on top of them make writing code easier and more abundant, so value inevitably flows to what's scarce: knowing what to build, how it should feel, how to make it desirable, and how to get attention efficiently.

Those things are largely driven by taste.

Taste is a difficult thing to pin a definition on, but let's call it an aesthetic point of view and the discernment of quality in context. If that's true, having good taste requires a sense of the felt experience which remains beyond the grasp of the models. To win in this moment, technology companies need taste and the expression of it through the design of experiences, brand, and narrative.

This taste pressure exists for all companies now, but counterintuitively it's most acute at the earliest stages.

A new company has no history, no reputation, no name awareness, no brand equity, no distribution, no network effects, almost no team, and next to no capital.

And yet they have to find an edge, any edge, to acquire the initial resources needed to create some momentum, because preferential attachment is working against them at every step.

Consider acquiring capital. Investors see thousands of decks a year and pattern-match everything. They literally judge books by their cover. A compelling narrative and considered deck signal a considered founder. You can't change the past but you can impute the qualities of the company you'll build in the future.

Consider acquiring talent. Getting in front of talent requires getting attention on the internet. And then convincing them to take a chance on you requires a clear expression of values and latent potential. Good design and a clear brand accomplish both.

Consider acquiring and keeping customers. Excellent design and brand are more memorable, more emotionally resonant, and more effective for social signaling. People perceive more aesthetically designed products as more usable, even when actual functionality is identical.

Among the few levers available to all early-stage founders are speed of execution and good design. But this is before most founders have the resources to access it.

The Design Gap

Say you're a founder who understands this. You know you need to invest early in design but, alas, are not a designer yourself. You try to hire for it, but great designers are picky. They want to see something, some proof of your potential and the potential that design will be wielded as a strategic advantage.

You don't have that yet. You need design to attract design. This is the design gap.

What options are there for founders to bridge this gap?

Agencies are expensive and slow. The partner who pitched you is not involved in the work. That's the business model. You are a client, and they are a vendor. There's a layer of performance between you and the work—always a deck, always a reveal, always a layer of obfuscation.

Freelancers are cheaper but often unreliable and usually only execute what you tell them. You manage them instead of thinking with them. When scope shifts, and it will, things get awkward. Too often they're building a portfolio while you're trying to build a company. The incentives don't match.

Maybe hiring early is the right move after all. You think through the options again:

A head of design costs a lot. You're not ready for that commitment. A junior designer is more affordable, but you end up with the same problems as a freelancer: you're managing output instead of getting strategic partnership.

What you actually want is a founding designer: someone senior enough to set direction and lead a team but hungry enough to join early and execute quality work at pace as the only designer.

The problem is that the good ones are rare, and they know it. They usually have their pick of opportunities. Unless you can already demonstrate taste by building an attractive set of raw material to work with—they'll choose the founder who can.

These options are either expensive, slow, not strategic, or not attainable yet. They're not going to help you bridge the gap.

What's Old is New Again

What would the right kind of help look like?

They would design across product, brand, strategy, and narrative—not siloed in one function. They would understand and work in the actual materials of construction—code, prototypes, data, generative models, media—not just artifacts to help other people build. They would bring a point of view, shape direction, help make difficult decisions, and discern quality in the right context.

And they'd build beyond client work, so they can stay small without needing to lock you into long retainers to stay profitable.

So what then is the answer? The design studio.

Is this a new idea? Not at all. But today the model takes on a new light and solves problems the other options can't.

What would you be looking for?

It should be the independent practice of an individual or small team. The principal is the team; there's no bait and switch for who does the work. They embed deep enough in the team to move at the speed required. They can work across the converging disciplines of product, engineering, brand, strategy, and narrative. They're accountable like a co-founder, but don't require a third of the company or a permanent cash commitment. They're a partner you collaborate with through a specific chapter, not a vendor you manage or an employee you marry. And they get you to the point where you can attract the kind of quality full-time design talent you need to go the distance.

If design matters this much, expect more studios like this to emerge. They'll look different. They'll build portfolios of taste: client work, products, experiments, media, investing. They'll cover a lot of ground, move at the pace you need, remain an honest broker, and always be about the work.

The model certainly has constraints. Capacity is limited; they can only go deep with a handful of founders at a time. Aesthetic preferences have to align. Teams have to want a true partner. But for founders at certain critical moments—launching, raising, pivoting, or finding direction—it's the right structure for today.

The design gap for early startups is real. If you're in it, you'll know. But now you know there's another way through.