THOUGHTS

Hunting Unicorn
250117

I know a guy who knows a guy, who knows another guy. People usually hit me up when they’re looking. At least that’s how people start when they want to hire a first designer.

But really, you can’t just waltz into a job board and post a role and hope for the best. It’s whispered introductions, backchannel referrals, and late night text messages. The best designers are not out there posting shower thoughts on LinkedIn. They’re buried in work, quietly shaping products you already admire but never knew who touched it.

Every founder feels the squeeze. The market is chaotic, and the myth persists that “top” designers only come stamped with FAANG pedigrees. But pedigree is not what you need. At a startup, end-to-end doesn’t mean shipping one feature over nine months with a 20-person team backing them. It means inventing an entire product category from nothing. That’s a different skill set entirely.

The mistake most founders make is chasing prestige. The designer you’re actually looking for is a true generalist with taste and judgment. So, look for range. A strong founding designer is part product strategist, part storyteller, part craftsperson. They know how to run customer interviews, build the prototype, sweat the details, and build a pitch deck for investors at night, while still be able to step back at any point to ask if the whole thing even makes sense. Think more Da Vinci than feature factory. They thrive in ambiguity, love to navigate the fog, balance speed with clarity, and care about the essence of the product, not just its surface.

They’re not gonna be hanging out in obvious places. Look for freelancers who’ve quietly built entire products from scratch. Look for the first designers at small teams doing the heavy lifting. Look for people solving problems, not chasing clout. Follow the trail of products you admire back to the people that shaped them.

When you do meet one, run a process that respects their craft. Skip the whiteboard puzzles because it’s imppossible to actually assess the quality anyway. Instead, bring them your real mess and the magic, and see how they think, how they question, how they balance vision within constraint. The right designer will push back on your ideas, refine it, and oftentimes dismantle it so it can be rebuilt stronger.

These design people want to work on things that matter. They want ownership, autonomy, and founders who treats design as a core discipline. A designer can tell immediately if you see them as equal partner or an accessory. Give them that, give them a glorious purpose, in order to outplay big tech. Show them design is part of your company’s DNA. Write a job description that speaks like a human with empathy and wit and creativity. Share your philosophy, your conviction that design is central, not cosmetic. Philosophers from Aristotle to Taoists understood, form and essence are inseparable. That’s what great designers bring to your company.

Hiring your first designer isn’t about chasing a unicorn or a pegasus. It’s about clarity in finding someone whose craft, ambition, and philosophy align with yours. And you do that by treating design as foundational and you’ll attract the ones who want to build the thing you actually need, a product people love to use.