More designers should be founders. Aaron Epstein, Y Combinator

Over the next decade, as new coding tools make it easier than ever to build and ship products quickly, great design is going to matter even more.

Especially as many designers are worried about AI replacing their jobs, the real opportunity is for designers to use AI themselves to launch their own products and build their own companies. The design job of the future will be "founder".

Designers already have so many of the skills needed to be great – strong user empathy, a focus on solving problems, a high bar for quality, and taste. These are a must for every founding team.

That's why it's no accident that some of the biggest YC companies, like Airbnb and Stripe, are known for their exceptional design. Without it, users wouldn't have trusted staying in a stranger's Airbnb, or trusted securely processing billions in credit card transactions through Stripe. These companies simply wouldn't have worked without first class design.

So we'd love to see more designers take the leap and start companies, and hope to fund teams with strong design and taste embedded in their core from the earliest days.