Working with startups — such a cool phrase, that every designer adds it to the CV or a wishlist, like “I want to work with Startups this season”. In fact, working with startups is not that different from designing an average product, yet the flow appears to be a little bit faster, everyone around a little bit more in a hurry and you a little bit more drained in rounds of fixes and new functionality requests.

“You know what? I just have been to the beach and met there a friend of a friend of a friend of mine and they said that their friend has a friend who has a friend who suggested making a new onboarding and adding a video calls option to our app”, — such a start of the call is a typical thing for startupers. While designing for those, who work on the new app or product launch, you need to keep in mind, that things will be changing very quickly.

Due to the constant pressure from the investor’s side and great competition rates, especially in Silicone Valley or Cali overall, which is believed to be a place with a troubling obsession with startups-launching, people will be asking for adding more unique features and new functions over and over again until the app will not turn in the app with “everything”. So designer really needs to stop things at the right time to prevent all apps from losing their key value and idea in the end.

Moreover, you need to be communicative. Except for being really calm and flexible, you also need to be ready to jump on quick calls 10 times a day and always be there to pick up a phone when someone is calling you to discuss a new set of screens. Explaining things like scheduling and planning the meetings will definitely not work here, since you are in the constantly-spinning world of startups.

Being aware of everything going on around is another key requirement. You need to check on the news and lists of lately launching startups, to know your competitors and always keep a track of the best solutions on the market. As well as watching conferences and knowing about the events in the investment field to make sure you control the informational field.

Working with startups is complete chaos. You should be ready to lose control at the very start of your cooperation. However, this is the highly inspiring process, that will bring you lots of joy and will teach you how can you work faster to be really productive!