How UX is going to kill Web3 products

I was speaking to some co-founders when I was in San Francisco recently for Startup Grind, mainly around ZeroToDesign and how we help startups.

The co-founders were on opposite ends of the outsourcing scale for their Product & UX design. One was very chilled about the idea of Z2D coming in and owning their Design function — let’s call him Dude1. The other, let’s call him Dude2, was completely against it, as he wanted to have a proper in-house team to handle their Product Design.

We’ve seen these two personas from the very beginning of Z2D. It’s a founder conversation, and how happy they are to have what on paper is an outsourced function for their product (we don’t work like an outsourced function but that’s a topic for another time).

Our conversation then took a turn when Dude1 made an interesting point. He said:

There’s no problem in outsourcing when the product isn’t your entire business.

When your product isn’t the entire business. Interesting. What he was saying was that when there are other USPs in your business, beyond just the (typically SaaS) product you are creating, then outsourcing isn’t a problem, because it’s not the be-all and end-all for your business, there are other things customers care about that you provide.

(I disagree with the idea of outsourcing being appropriate for non-primary products — but I do accept that many startups feel they need to…