Like... sorry to be That Guy, but maybe just employ / have a team with the right people from the start?
If a designer had a tech startup with no engineers, we'd all be (rightly) sniffy about it.
Imagine this post the other way round: "Hey, designers, here's everything you need to know about engineering and devops and coding in ONE PAGE!". Think about the HN response to this - it'd go down like a ton of hot shit. And rightly so.
I used to work at an educational tech company and they would - without even breaking into a sweat - take one of their engineering team and put them in charge of marketing. Same rule applies - imagine it the other way round, a marketing person with no knowledge of engineering setting the strategy for engineering. (And yes, I know it happens, but when it does we all moan on about it, no...?!)
Long and short: a startup / product without a UX person or designer in it right from the start is likely to be a clusterfuck.
An early startup starts with jack of all trades. If you needed the full team that even a $10m company would have you are probably not a typical early startup.
The reality is marketing is a skill most people can fudge because they have done it. They have gotten jobs, dates and haggled for a free beer before.
Programming is only something freaks do so the average marketer won't code. And if they do the average coding marketer won't make resilient 99% uptime code without subtle bugs.
Hate to circlejerk but man .... programming to produce robust, correct, reliable systems that do something useful is hard. Despite what the AI bros are hot taking on X these days.
Have you ever noticed that some tradespeople do their own books but bookkeepers won't come and fix your AC unit.
If a designer had a tech startup with no engineers, we'd all be (rightly) sniffy about it.
Imagine this post the other way round: "Hey, designers, here's everything you need to know about engineering and devops and coding in ONE PAGE!". Think about the HN response to this - it'd go down like a ton of hot shit. And rightly so.
I used to work at an educational tech company and they would - without even breaking into a sweat - take one of their engineering team and put them in charge of marketing. Same rule applies - imagine it the other way round, a marketing person with no knowledge of engineering setting the strategy for engineering. (And yes, I know it happens, but when it does we all moan on about it, no...?!)
Long and short: a startup / product without a UX person or designer in it right from the start is likely to be a clusterfuck.