Design Partners are often the unsung heroes in the early stages of software development. These initial users, who engage with a company’s software before its broader release, provide invaluable feedback that shapes everything from core product functionality and user experience to crucial aspects like pricing and packaging. For companies aiming to launch successfully and achieve product-market fit swiftly, the right design partners are indispensable. However, many organizations struggle to effectively identify and engage these partners, leading to wasted resources and misdirection from partners who aren’t the right fit or aren’t using the product as intended.
Drawing from our extensive experience guiding numerous startups through their critical zero-to-one phase at income-partners.net, we’ve witnessed firsthand both successful and unsuccessful design partner collaborations. To equip you with the tools to find and evaluate these vital collaborators, we’ve distilled our insights into a robust three-part assessment framework centered on urgency, capability, and representativeness.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Indispensable Role of Design Partners
Before diving into our framework, it’s crucial to underscore why design partners are so essential. Design partners are your pioneering users, enlisted to help define your company’s problem space and refine your solutions as you prepare your product for market entry. While not every company might require them, a select group of transparent and engaged users or prospective customers can be instrumental in guiding the initial iterations of your product’s functionality, user experience, pricing strategy, packaging, and much more.
Companies engage design partners at various stages of their development. These partnerships can range from treating partners as research subjects to viewing them as genuine early customers who are likely to convert to paying users.
Our observation is that framing design partners more as research subjects initially is often more beneficial than immediately focusing on them as paying customers. This is because your primary objective at this stage is rapid iteration on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You need candid feedback from users on their problems, current solutions, and whether your product offers a superior alternative to the status quo. Design partners shouldn’t be mistaken for mere cheerleaders or lighthouse accounts, nor do they negate the necessity of deep product insight or the “earned secret” gained from thorough market research. Their constructive critiques should be the bedrock for building a product that is both useful and user-friendly for your broader target customer base. If these partnerships naturally evolve into paying customer relationships, that’s a significant validation of your product hypothesis. However, in the initial phase, prioritize understanding if they genuinely experience the pain point you aim to solve and if they represent your ideal customer profile, rather than focusing solely on immediate revenue. Remember, the product you present to design partners can initially be mocks or prototypes, even with manual backend processes, as long as you effectively communicate the core value proposition and gather actionable feedback.
Defining the Ideal Design Partner
So, what are the defining characteristics of an effective design partner? When you’re prepared to collaborate with design partners, we recommend evaluating them against three core criteria:
1. Representativeness (of a Broader Market)
Firstly, a design partner should be representative of your target market. Consider the similarity between the design partner’s needs and systems and those of the companies you engaged with during your customer research journey, as well as the broader market you intend to serve. The goal is to avoid tailoring your product too narrowly to a specific customer, or worse, developing custom software that only caters to a single entity. This broader market representation is crucial for ensuring your product resonates with a wider audience and achieves scalable product-market fit.
Representativeness also extends to the buyer persona within the design partner’s organization. Are you engaging with the correct internal stakeholder? Is this individual a reliable reflection of the typical stakeholder you’ll encounter in other potential customer companies? It’s important to note that your target buyer persona might evolve throughout the design partnership. You may discover that your product aligns more effectively with a different buyer profile, and that’s perfectly acceptable and a valuable insight gained through the process.
2. Urgency
The most effective design partners are characterized by a genuine and pressing need for your product. They should demonstrate enthusiasm for working with you and actively shaping the product because they are genuinely invested in finding a solution to their problem. Often, these partners have already explored or implemented alternative solutions, or even developed temporary workarounds internally before encountering your product. They are actively seeking a superior solution and are ready to adopt a new product promptly. This sense of urgency is a strong indicator of a valuable design partner.
Urgency is often more pronounced in scaling companies that prioritize speed and efficiency compared to larger corporations. Larger companies typically operate at a slower pace, require more time to build trust, and necessitate multiple layers of approvals before adopting new solutions. While early-stage startups (Seed, Series A) often exhibit high urgency, they might not always be the ideal design partners due to frequently shifting requirements and a tendency to bypass thorough evaluation of alternatives.
Identifying design partners with high urgency can reveal market segments with greater adoption velocity. While a pain point may be widespread across an industry, not all segments are equally poised to be early adopters. You should aim to identify a launchpad segment with heightened urgency, often driven by factors like disruptive technology transitions or critical limitations in existing legacy solutions. For example, Databricks capitalized on the urgency of companies struggling with on-premise Hadoop cluster management by launching their fast cloud analytics engine. Similarly, Plaid addressed the slow legacy micro-deposit options with mobile-first onboarding and a faster API-based authentication and account linking process, fueled by the urgency of companies like Venmo seeking faster solutions. These high-velocity segments can propel your product into the broader market more effectively.
3. Capacity
Finally, a design partner must possess the practical capacity to actively collaborate with you. This encompasses both technical and personnel capacity. Technically, they must be able to implement your product, meaning they collect the necessary data, have a compatible software stack, etc. Personnel capacity refers to having the right individual within their organization dedicated to the project – an internal champion. Ask yourself: Do they have a dedicated employee who can champion this project internally? Do they have the organizational capability to implement the software effectively? Do they have the time to provide consistent and valuable feedback? While CEOs might express initial excitement about a product, they are often not the actual buyers or users and cannot mandate organizational-wide adoption or consistent usage. You need to engage with a genuine buyer who can provide insights into both implementation specifics and buying decisions. Crucially, they should also demonstrate a willingness to experiment and adapt.
While early-stage startups often show urgency, their internal instability can make them challenging design partners. They may undergo frequent internal changes (organizational structure, budgets, even product direction), and their experimental budgets might be limited. Conversely, navigating early-stage startups can be simpler, especially for complex products, due to less rigid organizational structures.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Launching a Successful Design Partnership
Once you’ve identified and selected suitable design partners based on the criteria above, several tactical considerations are crucial to ensure a productive and beneficial relationship.
Initiating the Conversation
When starting your search for design partners, leveraging warm connections is the most effective approach. Tap into your network and ask for introductions. We’ve also observed companies achieving success by posting on platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn or through targeted cold outreach. Individuals who respond to public posts or direct messages about design partnerships are likely experiencing a strong need for your product and are actively seeking solutions. You can then assess their user profile fit in subsequent conversations.
Structuring the Partnership
After a design partner commits to collaboration, prioritize establishing a framework for recurring feedback throughout the product iteration process. Ensure you address key questions regularly: How effectively does the product function? How seamlessly does it integrate with their existing workflows and tools? What are the potential setup challenges? Does the MVP align with the promised expectations?
Occasionally, an executive might agree to a design partnership, but the team or individual who will actually use the product within the company is not fully engaged. Depending on who will ultimately champion the product internally, soliciting feedback from only one party can create disconnects or misidentify the true user persona. Ideally, involve both the potential buyer and the end-user in the design partnership arrangement. Engaging the end-user is particularly valuable during the phase of validating product usability and feature sets. The ultimate goal should be for the end-user to become proficient and independent in using the product by the end of the partnership period.
To maintain alignment and accountability, consider establishing a formal agreement with your design partners, although it’s not always strictly necessary in the very early stages. A contract is helpful for defining the feedback collection timeframe, clarifying expectations regarding feedback frequency and depth, ensuring mutual agreement, and setting the engagement duration (e.g., one, three, or six months with bi-weekly check-ins via calls or meetings). Contract discussions can also reveal early on if a potential design partner lacks the time commitment required to provide the level of feedback you need – valuable information to have before investing significant time and resources.
Determining the Optimal Number of Design Partners
We recommend starting with a manageable cohort of five to ten design partners. While a surge of inbound interest in your product is encouraging, attempting to onboard more than twenty partners initially can become overwhelming. High demand is a positive indicator of market interest, but a larger number of partners increases the complexity of communication and expectation management, especially when pivoting or testing new approaches. It’s more efficient to begin with a smaller, focused group of design partners for rapid iteration and then transition the remaining interested parties into early customers once the product is closer to market-ready. The ideal number of design partners also depends on the product’s nature and feedback requirements. If you are building for a niche persona and focusing on specific functionality, such as an authentication tool, five high-quality design partners might suffice. However, if you’re developing a horizontal product for a broader user base like sales operations teams, a wider range of partners across different sectors and company stages can yield richer market insights.
Converting Design Partners to Paying Customers
Notably absent from our framework so far is the design partner’s willingness to pay or the potential contract value. In the initial design partner phase, prioritizing feedback is more crucial than immediate revenue or contract negotiations. Focusing on pricing models and contract terms too early can distract from the core objective of product development and slow down the entire process. However, a design partner’s expressed willingness to pay is a strong positive signal of market pull and business viability. Remember to defer optimizing contract value until the product is more refined and market-ready.
Ideally, once your design partners have actively used your product and you are confident in its market readiness, you can shift your focus to securing your first paying customers. If your design partner agreement already includes a monetary component, this is the opportune time to convert it into a formal sales contract. If payment wasn’t initially part of the agreement, explore their willingness to pay based on their positive experiences with the product. You don’t need a perfectly polished pricing strategy at this conversion stage. Instead, focus on understanding their value perception: Do they prioritize time savings, reduced engineering headcount through outsourcing, or displacement of an incumbent solution? Understanding their value drivers will inform your pricing and sales approach.
A common pitfall, particularly for technical founders, is that a design partner might value the founder’s technical expertise more than the product itself, and be willing to pay for that expertise. Whether to pursue this type of engagement depends on your product development stage. Consultative expertise in the early phases can offer deeper insights and facilitate faster, more flexible product iterations. However, relying solely on this model once the product is market-ready can be problematic because 1) it lacks scalability, and 2) the product’s value proposition becomes intertwined with the founder’s expertise, obscuring potential feature gaps or adoption challenges.
While converting design partners into initial customers is a desirable outcome, it’s also perfectly acceptable to conclude the design partnership without a signed sales contract. If a partner proves to be a poor fit, express gratitude for their time and redirect your efforts towards your broader sales strategy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Conclusion
Achieving product-market fit is rarely a linear path. However, leveraging design partners is a highly effective strategy for gathering high-fidelity feedback throughout your journey. Remember that you may need to engage with multiple cohorts of design partners before identifying a market segment with sufficient demand to propel your company forward. Don’t hesitate to cycle through early partners or even forgo some initial revenue during this crucial learning phase. At this stage of company development, prioritizing market and user understanding, and closely analyzing user behavior, are paramount for building the right product to solve the right problem. We encourage you to share your experiences and insights on finding and working with design partners. Please reach out to us via email or DM us @JenniferHli and @Seema_Amble on Twitter.
Want more insights from income-partners.net?
Sign up to get the best content, news, and strategies for maximizing your income partnerships.
Thanks for subscribing to the income-partners.net newsletter.
Check your inbox for a welcome note.
MANAGE MY SUBSCRIPTIONS By clicking the Subscribe button, you agree to the Privacy Policy.
