This is a question that has been asked and discussed time and again. While it is awesome if you have a kick ass designer in your team, what does one do when no one in the startup team is has good design skills. I mean no one in the team can start from scratch and design a decent looking UI. What does one do then?
The first thought that occurs is to outsource your design work. Seems like a good idea. But if the startup is bootstrapped and has not yet found a proven revenue model ( or in other words you have zero revenues) is it a good idea to spend on the design of the website? In India, good designers charge as much as their western counterparts and if someone is not charging enough and promising you awesome designs, he/she is probably giving false promises (at least that has been my experience). If outsourcing to a web designer is within your budget, then, by all means, hire a good designer. But what if the cash situation is a bit tight?
Learn to do stuff on your own? Well if you can then nothing like it. But if you do not have the bandwidth to learn, I would suggest learn just enough to modify somebody else's work. There are tonnes of awesome freely available CSS templates available on the web. Just pick the one which you feel shall suit your needs and learn to modify it according to your needs. It looks decent enough for you to focus on validating your idea. And when your app is growing and you feel a change is needed, hire a kick ass web designer to revamp your app. At this point of time, you shall have much more clarity about what you want from the designer. I recommend this approach to everyone.
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