A Designed Startup

Ever since we started WooThemes, we’ve been absolutely fascinated with top notch design and we’d like to believe that this focus has been evident throughout all of our activities (from our themes, to the user experience on our site, our content and also our marketing campaigns). This should also be fairly obvious when you consider the amount of amazing web designers we’ve collaborated with, plus we’re always harping on about how awesome our designs are anyway…

Whilst design is ultimately subjective, one thing that can’t be disputed is the fact that our designer focus has probably contributed significantly to our success. This seems to be confirmed by startup guru, Dave McClure, in a recent BusinessWeek article about the value of design to startups:

“Design and marketing aren’t just as important as engineering: They are way more important.”

So in a very techy industry (the interwebs), there seems to be a lot of room for the more design-orientated folk among us. In the past, you could probably get by if you had a superior & groundbreaking product, but these days your competition is much tougher and you need to fight for every person that gives you their attention (superb design tends to be successful in this regard).

In a recent comparison of microblogging giants, Tumblr & Posterous, the author says (about Tumblr’s popularity):

“Or, to put it another way: Posterous is an engineered product, while Tumblr is a designed product.”

Two posts on the topic and both seems to indicate that a superb design has become a competitive advantage, which may just differentiate you from your competitors (and ultimately bring you success, instead of putting that on their doorstep).

Design.

By now you can guess where we’re going with this: don’t underestimate the value that design can bring to your startup or just any project in general.

Superb design work is admittedly quite expensive, but a mediocre design, user experience & marketing campaign just won’t cut it anymore. If you haven’t been giving this enough thought & energy until now, you need to implement a more design-focused approach in your thinking & strategizing.

We’re just one of the success stories in terms of companies that has been successful with this approach and whilst I don’t think that you can’t be successful without such an approach; I do think you’re giving yourself a massive head start. Bonus for me is the fact that others seem to be convinced that you can design your way to the top.