It’s more likely that a designer will start a company today than at any time before. I think that’s really, really wonderful because it signals that design is more necessary than ever, and if you have strong design skills, you have a better chance of making a successful business now than you did in the past 10 or 20 years. I think the call for designers to become founders, on the whole, is a good thing, but I think designers really have to understand what it means to become a founder and to take on the challenge of building a company, not just building a product or just designing a product.

I think that’s a really important distinction that can be hard for a lot of designers to traverse. Understanding all of the implications of being responsible for a company, not just being responsible for a design, really understanding that making sure that company survives from day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month is a whole different challenge. Design can be a big part of that and can really help it, but it’s not always the complete solution. I think that’s important for designers, especially young designers, to understand as the drumbeat of designers becoming founders gets louder every year.

Khoi Vinh.