Rejection by Design
Like many things in life, starting a tech company involves lots and lots of rejection. On any given day you might be rejected by potential customers, potential investors, the press, more investors, and even coworking spaces (thank you San Francisco). A thick skin is a must and I’m becoming more thankful every day for the many girls who rejected me throughout middle-school and high-school. Surviving (and occasionally thriving) in the face of rejection is one of the more under-rated skills any entrepreneur should have.
Who could say no to this face?
But this post isn’t really about rejection or failed attempts at romance. It’s about the design crunch that’s affecting the tech industry right now.
For those of you who haven’t tried to hire a designer recently, they’re one of the most sought-after employees in the valley. The most obvious culprits are the more than 3 million apps available in mobile app stores, but the second coming of Apple, the Internet of Things and the ongoing efforts of the entire Nordic population have pushed design into the forefront of the public consciousness, and the design team is now a core part of nearly every business.
Which means that when we tried to hire a designer for what may be the best design job on the planet — creative lead across brand, marketing and product at a enterprise-consumer startup — we got rejected. A lot. And we’ve been rejected for everything from “you don’t pay enough” (so true!), to “you’re offering to pay too much” (awkward!), to “you don’t offer enough mentorship” (trial by fire is mentorship!), to “talking to you has made me appreciate my current employers even more” (darkly comic). So we’ve taken an ”It takes a village approach,” where all our engineers, who’ve taken pay cuts to build something they believe in with no mentorship and almost certainly uncool founders, are actively helping to design the UX of an app. And I have to say it’s turning out pretty great.
We’ve cobbled together work from a series of contractors, with our amateur Photoshop skills (former Adobe employees unite!), and created something we can be proud of. It’s practical, and users seem to like it, so we’re happy.
Our classy new look
But we know it still needs work. And a logo. So we took a path well traveled but not well loved; the 99 Designs logo contest. For those of you who don’t know 99 Designs, it’s a marketplace where cheap offshore designers flood your inbox with horrendously bad work until miraculously one awesome logo peeks through. Then you pay the creator a few hundred bucks.
It’s completely effective in a pinch, but it also yielded the strangest rejection of all. The response so bizarre it inspired this whole post. A designer who pulled their work from the contest, despite being told they had the top piece and were probably going to win, because the competition was just too fierce. That was the cruelest cut. The work was done, the piece was uploaded and they yanked it. I’m proud to say that I’m pretty good at taking a punch both literally and metaphorically, but this was one of the most rant-inducing things that’s happened to me this year, and I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff.
In the end, we got this. Which is pretty nice and should hold us over until our designer arrives. (Good news on that front below)
… Because butterflies Emmerge — get it?
So with a design crunch so bad, where do you turn? Deny (pronounced like the 24 hour diner) Khoung. Despite how he spells his name, Deny didn’t reject us at all. He actually matched us to a designer through an amazing program he’s running called Whitespace. They’re training a new generation of digital product designers specifically for the new Internet economy, providing mentorship, coolness, and a supply of smart people willing to expand their design chops. The program is brilliantly designed (of course) — and mixes 3 days a week on-site practical work at a company with 2 days a week of training and feedback at Whitespace.
If you’re like us and you can’t find that perfect visual designer who is also a master of user experience, check out Whitespacecrew.com. (But you’ll have to wait for the next class, we’ve already got dibs on this one)
Originally published at emmerge.com.
