Why a founding designer is critical for an AI startup: Tingyu Su's perspective

Tingyu Su, a renowned designer and expert in AI and product development, has put forward a position that challenges traditional understanding of roles in startups: as artificial intelligence enables development teams to write code at breathtaking speed, the designer's role shifts from the periphery to the strategic center of the company.

When Everyone Codes at the Same Speed

According to a recent Stanford University report, AI's performance on a key coding benchmark jumped from 60% to nearly 100% in just one year. Meanwhile, organizational AI adoption among major companies reached 88%.

• AI performance on coding benchmark: 60% to 100% in one year
• Organizational AI adoption: 88%
• Software development speed has accelerated many times over

This represents a revolutionary shift: any AI startup can now generate working code with equal efficiency. Development speed ceases to be a differentiator. Everyone will be fast. The question is no longer who codes faster, but who better understands what to code and why users need it.

Previously, when development was slow, a fast engineer had a huge advantage. Now all engineers can write at the same speed thanks to AI. This levels the playing field and shifts focus to strategy.

Designer as Competitive Advantage

Tingyu Su argues: in an era when AI has equalized everyone in coding speed, success depends on how you use that speed. What product are you building? How does the user experience look and feel? How do you embed AI in the interface so it helps the user rather than confuses them?

These questions cannot be answered by an engineering team alone. What's needed is product strategy, visual language, deep understanding of user psychology and behavior. This is where the role of the founding designer shifts from a design department to a strategic office next to the CEO and CTO.

It's not enough for a designer to make beautiful buttons. A founding designer must answer the questions:

• What problem does the startup solve (and how acute is it)
• How AI helps rather than becomes a crutch
• What metrics actually show success (retention, NPS, activation)
• How to scale the experience as the audience grows

A good founding designer can save a startup from years of wasted engineering effort. Poor design with good functionality is a lost product. But good design with basic functionality can become the foundation for growth.

What Changed in Hiring and Structure

Traditional order: engineers write the MVP, then a designer comes and polishes the interface. Tingyu Su proposes the opposite order: a founding designer should join the team alongside the CEO and CTO (or literally in the first quarter), before the first line of product code.

Why is this critical? Because the designer shapes the product vision before engineers invest weeks implementing the wrong idea. The designer participates in strategic decisions: which features to prioritize, how to position the product, how to integrate AI not as a marketing gimmick but as a real tool.

When a designer joins the team from the start, they help ensure that engineers build not just technically correct code, but a solution that users actually want to use.

What This Means

The AI revolution in development hasn't made designers unnecessary — it's made them irreplaceable. In a world where all engineers can write code through AI 10 times faster, the startup wins whose founding designer understands: what product should actually be built, how it looks and feels, and how it will attract and retain users.

Startups that ignore this shift and hire a designer last risk building fast but wrong. Those who place the designer at the strategic center will gain an advantage that's harder to copy: a clear product vision and user experience that truly resonates.