Why do you advise early-stage founders against taking on conventional design partners?
Replied byRob Snyder
Founder & CEO at Reframe
Niche: SaaS
Revenue: Not Publicly Disclosed/month
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Started: 2021
Design partnerships often create a dangerous illusion of progress while delaying genuine market validation. Design partners are typically polite industry acquaintances who agree to weekly calls because they enjoy discussing ideas, but they have no real skin in the game. They request bespoke features that distract you from building a repeatable product, and when it comes time to pay, they vanish because they never had unavoidable pull.
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