Product design at startups

I seriously got into design while building my own product for a startup I co-founded called closiit. In short, it was a marketplace where artists like Chappell Roan, Nine Inch Nails, and Blink 182 auctioned off memorabilia to fans. Somebody had to design the thing, and we were a team of 2 so… there you go. Needless to say, I had no idea what I was doing, but boy did I start liking it. Thankfully, I also had a great mentor (shoutout Benjamin Prigent) and my product ended up being decent enough to generate $230k in revenue (case study is here if you’re interested).

Anyways, closiit ultimately failed (more on that in another article) but I walked away with some crucial learnings that I’m now applying at Clutch, a series C startup (and Canada’s largest online car retailer) where I lead design efforts.

The experience of designing at a startup is scrappy, high-pace, and honestly a ton of fun (at least for me). I’ve been asked by a lot of designers what it’s like, so I thought I’d jot down some thoughts here.

Regardless, these are solid skills to bring to any organization. I mean, our product efforts at Clutch helped us grow 2x in the past year, so I must be doing something right (I hope?). Anyways, here goes.

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Learning 1: Develop product sense

I’ve heard multiple definitions of “product sense”, so I’ll clarify what I mean here: having product sense is to understand how an isolated design change will affect the greater user experience.

While a large product team gives you a support system with many QA processes in place, design teams at startups are small, and the process is messy. You might be the only designer working on a feature, and you might even have to be the product manager too. Therefore the consequences of lacking product sense here can be quite catastrophic.

Imagine having an orchestra and changing the tempo of the horn section alone. Chances are, it will sound very off to listeners and your ticket sales will tank.

Think of yourself as a section of an orchestra, not as a solo artist.

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Learning 2: Prioritize for business

Startups need to move fast because they are limited on time and resources. This means you need to prioritize high-impact projects that move the company in the right direction.

At closiit, I was dying to improve our auction features. There was so much I wanted to do that I knew would help yield higher bidding behaviour. In the end, I had to settle for a “good enough” set of features and shift my focus to those that would help us acquire more users (such as multi-artist stores).

As designers, it’s so tempting to keep optimizing a single feature when you know there is room for improvement, but our job is to build a product that drives the business forward. Making your car’s engine more powerful when you’re still missing a pair of tires won’t get you anywhere.

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Learning 3: F*** perfection. Be scrappy

Hot take here, so before I get flooded with hate mail from the UI police, hear me out.

We’ve all read the Lean Startup, but “ship fast, learn fast” is hard to accept for a lot of designers, me included. We strive to be pixel-perfect and we hate to catch imperfections down the line. So we often allocate a far too large portion of our time refining the UI over and over again until our eyes are satisfied.

I personally force myself to break that habit.

Before refining your UI, figure out whether it’s worth refining at all. Research will tell you whether something is worth designing, but that doesn’t mean your first iteration will be the right one. Be scrappy, test fast, ship fast, and learn fast. Only then should you start perfecting your UI.

It’s easy to get tunnel vision and spend hours tweaking a shade. To avoid this, I set strict deadlines to complete a design, and I force myself to stick to them. It’s ok if something doesn’t look exactly how I want it to be; it eventually will. That is unless users see no value in it, in which case it doesn’t deserve more of my time.

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Learning 4: Don’t just “talk to users”. Get your hands dirty

Most of us check the “research” box because we conducted 5 user interviews (you technically don't need more as Jakob Nielsen explains). I’m not saying you shouldn’t interview users, but you can get deeper in the weeds by immersing yourself in other departments. This can be sales, customer success etc. You get the picture.

I spent 2 weeks selling cars at Clutch. It ended up being the most productive research I’ve ever done. I witnessed user problems in real-time rather than during an interview filled with prototypes and hypotheticals. I may not have been the top salesman at Clutch (Steve, our founder, likes to remind me once in a while :) ), but I came out two weeks later with a list of features that ultimately reduced conversion time, grew AOV and more.

At larger companies, it will be hard for a designer to justify working as a salesperson for a few days. On the other hand, many startups will encourage that.

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Learning 5: Always measure success

I have a hard time sleeping at night if I don’t know the impact of my work. I’m not recommending that you pick up that habit by any means. What I’m trying to say is that if I’m going to spend time and resources on a feature, I need to know if it accomplishes the goal we set for it. And it’s ok if it doesn’t, because it prevents us from building the wrong thing, which is ultimately a win.

What you don’t want is to ship something pretty that you *think* helps users because of research, but in fact it does the contrary, and just sits in your product for weeks, or even months. Startups can’t afford that.

It’s helpful to align with stakeholders on what success means and setting KPIs before starting to work on a project. Some examples of KPIs are conversion rate, average order value, average session duration, retention rate etc.

Get familiar with tools like Google Analytics (it’s free!) and you’ll soon get your dopamine hits from conversion funnels rather than TikTok :)

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Conclusion

Designing at a startup is uncomfortable, but it offers a ton of opportunities to grow your skills and have a measurable impact on a business. You also get to dip your toes in different fields and figure out what you enjoy. Like everything else, it has its pros and cons, but the learnings are transferable to organizations of any size. Worth a try!