Tech Startups vs ScaleUps: Adapt Design Ops For Success

Key takeaways:

1. Half of startups fail within 5 years; only 1 in 200 become scaleups growing 20% yearly.
2. Design Ops must evolve from ad-hoc work to solid systems by $1M+ ARR and stable growth signals.
3. Use staged budgets, role changes, tooling, and measurable KPIs to avoid scaling traps and speed growth.

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Remember in the good ol’ days? It was you and a scrappy crew huddled around a single monitor churning out killer designs. The good old days (sort of).

Fast-forward to today: clients messaging 24/7, stakeholders blocked, product roadmap delays, and your design team… still around that same monitor. But here’s the major issue: design nowadays isn’t just a nice thing to have.

Design has become the backbone of high-growth companies of all sizes, from startups and scaleups to enterprises. A 2018 McKinsey study showed that the top percentile of design-centered companies outperform competitors by 2:1.

But before you go on a hiring spree for designers to crush your competition, you must answer: Is this the right time to scale? Startups and scale-ups tend to face this issue when scaling their design-oriented initiatives: timing.

This guide will show how to navigate the modern design-led landscape and brave the design growth dilemma in one fell swoop. Ensure a smooth transition for your team and learn the telltale signs of when it’s the right time to expand your team.

It may be time to throw away that (g)old monitor and take your design to the next level!

Design teams: Structure yours

When thinking about design teams, there are three main structures that companies may use: matrix/hybrid teams, decentralized teams, and centralized teams. Here’s a quick summary of each structure.

• Matrix: Centralized leadership but embedding designers within product teams guided by project managers.
• Decentralized: Designers are embedded within a product team.
• Centralized: All designers report to a single manager.

We explore these structures in the Awesomic guide to structuring your design team. If you’re still stuck in this phase, we recommend you check it out.  

Structuring your design team: Startups

Startups often have many challenges to overcome. A McKinsey study shows that 78% of startups never reach the point of achieving rapid and consistent growth to become a scaleup. So, how can your design team help you get to that point? What are the main roles and workflows you should be looking into?

Well, let’s break it down. Startups need to find sustainable growth over a period of time, so experimentation is a must. Especially when it comes to content marketing. We can take the example of ServiceNow that went from startup to owning a publication, growing to 1.5 million in audience in 6 years, and having 80% of the Fortune 500 as clients.

To ensure a strong content marketing strategy for your startup, you need to streamline the process of generating consistent, high-quality content. So, having a team structured with consistency in mind will help you when scaling further. A centralized structure is the best way to go about it, at least with 2 designers: the head of design and the most crucial field specialist.

Your head of design will also need to handle some of the content creation themselves regularly, especially when your startup has less than 15 people. Ensure you’re hiring someone who likes to get their hands dirty and is a pro at prioritizing initiatives and pushing back if needed.

Structuring your design team: ScaleUps

When you reach the status of Scaleup, it means you’ve laid the foundation and groundwork for your company’s growth. You’ve got the market and product fit, and you’re ready to start competing with established companies and enterprises.

The most recommended structure here is a decentralized one or a matrix approach since it’s the most modern way to go about it. The matrix approach ensures that each designer is embedded with a team and answers to project managers, and their Head of Design becomes someone who unblocks, supports, and prioritizes the initiatives.

This is especially true if your team is now composed of more than 50 people, so you won’t overload your designers. At this time, you should have at least 3 designers, one in a senior position and a Head of Design. This is a bigger team because you’re serving the necessities of an even bigger multifaceted team.

Your Head of Design should be someone who can prioritize, give accurate deadlines, and guide designers through projects if needed. They also need to have excellent stakeholder management skills.

But how do you know you're ready to scale your in-house team to deliver higher-quality designs faster, or if going for a subscription service that connects you to vetted, talented designers like Awesomic, is the better choice to handle more tasks without the hassle and costs of traditional hiring?

Solving pains before scaling

Before scaling your team, you must solve common pains. Ensuring that workflows for design requests and design team requests are done, you know the role the design has to play in your business success and the onboarding for new designers has the input of your current design team.

By doing this, you’ll be able to solve the most common issues that slow down design teams. In fact, if you’re scaling your design team to support you with brand and business projects, you should be familiar with Design Ops.

DesignOps as defined by the Nielsen Norman Group is: “The orchestration and optimization of people, processes, and craft in order to amplify design’s value and impact at scale.”

DesignOps understanding is essential for scaling design teams effectively. Some of the most crucial DesignOps responsibilities are:

• Upskilling and growing design teams
• Help to hire and find the right people
• Unblock and improve workflows
• Improve the overall quality of all designs

This particular position has seen growth due to how design has changed over the years from being an almost separate department with no strategic input to weighing heavily on strategic decision-making nowadays. Due to shifts in customer behaviors and technology, new roles were created to accommodate their growing needs like UX designers and UI designers.

As design operations scale and their effect on companies tends to evolve faster than anticipated. This can bring high amounts of ROI and a lot of issues that need unblocking, mostly due time constraints and tooling.

DesignOps became that problem-solver so businesses can take full advantage of having design-led strategies that bring in real results. A report for the state of DesignOps for 2022 shows that over 50% of the time, professionals are collaborating with product and research ops teams to ensure design capabilities are met.

In short, DesignOps professionals ensure that design-thinking and user-centered design is built in the design process, leading to more efficient workflows and more added value.

Design + business = success!

When design and business areas such as marketing successfully come together for a company, it has the potential to change its history. As we explored in our most recent article about marketing and design, when both areas collaborate, the impact they can bring is ever-changing, as in Microsoft’s ADLaM project.

When design and business areas such as marketing successfully come together for a company, it has the potential to change its history. As we explored in our most recent article about marketing and design, when both areas collaborate, the impact they can bring is ever-changing, as in Microsoft’s ADLaM project.

On a smaller scale, for a startup or scaleups, we can take a look at Awesomic’s work with MemoryOS, where we helped them with the UI/UX design of their app and helped them become the most successful Kickstarter project for a new company’s application at the time we collaborated.

When Should Design Ops Change — What Signals to Watch?

If you're navigating the tricky waters of startup vs scale up, you’ll quickly see that design ops can’t stay the same forever. The question is, how do you know when it’s time to change? You’ll want to watch for clear signals across operations, finances, and your team culture. Let’s break it down.

Operational metrics

First, check your operational metrics. Are support tickets piling up? Is onboarding taking longer than three months? A growing design backlog or lots of duplicated UI components across repos means your system is struggling.

Also note if release cycles slow down or bug backlogs grow—these are red flags.

Financial and market signals

Next, look at financial and market signals. Passing $1M ARR with less than 20% monthly revenue swings often means it’s time to industrialize your design process. Fund-raise moments like moving from Series A to B also demand more structure. Unpredictable unit economics or tight runway deserve your attention.

People and culture

People and culture matter too. Hiring slows? Does performance management feel messy? Awareness of missing specialized roles will point you toward evolving your team setup.

Watch out for risk signs like knowledge bottlenecks—maybe the founder is the only one who really knows the design system—and lots of manual handoffs that slow you down or cause inconsistent UX.

Checklist

• Revenue over $1M ARR with under 20% MoM fluctuation
• Backlog of more than 50 design tickets
• Over 15 duplicated UI components across repositories
• Onboarding new hires takes longer than 3 months to hit speed
• Support incidents rising weekly past a manageable threshold

When those numbers hit, it’s time to rethink how your design ops run. For example, if clearing your backlog needs two or more full-time team members for three months or more, consider using our subscription talent marketplace as a flexible stopgap. It can help you plug gaps quickly, avoid slow hiring, and cut down manual handoffs.

Phased approach

Think of design ops changes as a journey: before Series A, keep it lean and focus on product-market fit. Post-Series A, start adding structure and automation. After Series B, aim for full design ops maturity with solid governance and scalable workflows.

Our subscription plans fit right in—starting small early on, scaling up with core team hires, and supporting overflow as you grow.

Getting started

To get rolling fast, start by standardizing your design libraries and setting up basic ticket systems. Mid-term, add design tokens and feature flags. Long-term, use data to run smooth experiments. From zero to 18 months, our flexible subscription roles can support every step—whether that’s cleaning up your backlog or launching new product designs.

Stakeholder buy-in

Finally, remember to get buy-in from everyone who counts: founders want speed without hiring pain, product teams need reliable talent for experiments, engineers want less friction, finance likes predictable costs, and sales and customer success need quick collateral for launches.

By watching these signals closely, you’ll know exactly when to switch gears in your scale up design journey—and we’re here to help make that shift smoother.

Benefits of scaling design operations

There are 4 significant areas that design can help improve in your company and why you should scale. The most affected departments by design teams are Growth, Marketing, Product, and Development. Now, if you’re part of a tech company, these are crucial pillars of how your company achieves success.

Scaling your team design team enables these other teams to do more. Suppose marketing wants to run a new social media campaign, growth wants to reactivate leads through an email campaign, developers are releasing a new web page, and a product needs a wireframe for a new product feature.

How are you going to lay all of this at a single designer’s feet? Chances are you won’t; you’ll need to concede on one of these initiatives. It’s imperative that your design team has the back of your other department’s projects and vice versa.

A simple way to put it, these are the benefits your team unlocks by having more creative and design bandwidth:

• Growth team: Growth teams can have more assets to test out ads to improve customer acquisition, costs, and more.
• Marketing and sales team: Marketing and sales teams can have materials to share with customers and use in events, brand alterations, activations, and more.
• Product team: Product teams can collaborate with UI/UX designers to create new wireframes of features, test out buttons, and create full features.
• Development team: Development teams can collaborate with website designers for banners and pages and app designers for web applications and mobile screens.

A 2018 Forrester report shows that companies that focus on design-thinking reduced time to market by 50% and cost up to $100K+.

Motives to not scale your design team

While having a great design team that can support business growth, scaling your design team may not be necessary right now. Here are the reasons why you should consider not scaling your design team:

• Design bandwidth: If your team doesn’t have any bandwidth constraints, such as being overloaded with tasks, late deliveries, and no time to be part of the strategic decision-making, then you most likely don’t need to scale your team. Ensure to talk to your business teams and designers about it, don’t just look at a project management app software and draw conclusions from there.
• Cost: If the costs, in time and money, of hiring a new design team do not make sense for your current financial standing. Design teams are an investment, such that all parts of the company have a stake in it, so ensure your product and growth-focused teams are not blocked by designer bandwidth.  
• Workflows and Onboarding: If your onboarding process and workflows are not yet set, then you most likely are not ready to expand your team. Take a few days with your design team to streamline requests, deadlines, time of delivery, and their tech stack before going back to the decision of scaling your team.
• Tooling consistency: In a Desingfound interview from 2022, ​​Olivia Taylor, currently Chief of Staff, Design & Research at Instacart, mentions that the hardest challenge to overcome for DesignOps teams is the tooling suite of designers. Ensure you got that right, and you’ll be ahead of the game to scale your design team and get better results.  

How to scale design teams for startups and scaleups

In order to successfully scale design operations for startups and scaleups, you need to consider which roles are the most important to your company. You must speak with the people in your company about the most crucial projects for the next quarters.

There is no do-or-die rule for what are the most important roles a tech design team should consider. But here’s where we found the best results came from, but before moving on as a last tip, you must ensure all designers dominate the tooling you can give them access to and accompany trends from the market. This is a must for a startup. And if your product has an educational component, don't overlook the need to hire an e-learning designer who can translate complex information into engaging, digestible experiences for your users.

UX Designer (avg. $93,195/year)

• Pros: UX designers are vital for creating seamless, user-centric products. They help ensure that the startup’s product aligns well with customer needs and creates intuitive user journeys.
• Cons: For early-stage startups, hiring UX designers can be resource-intensive, and startups may need to prioritize product development over extensive user testing.
• Ideal for: Startups and scaleups that emphasize user satisfaction and need quick iterations based on user feedback.

UI Designer (avg. $84,956/year)

• Pros: UI designers enhance visuals, making the product more attractive and engaging to navigate. This role is crucial for startups focused on tech solutions that need strong visuals.
• Cons: UI may be deprioritized over core functionality, and generalists may make more sense for startups and scaleups.
• Ideal for: Startups and scaleups focusing on visual appeal or industries where aesthetics are highly valued.

Product Designer (avg. $112,928/year)

• Pros: Product designers bridge UX and UI. It’s efficient for startups with limited resources. They balance user needs with business goals, making them valuable.
• Cons: The scope can mess with the focus on particular optimizations, particularly as the company grows. Especially if they don’t have the skills to do the design themselves.
• Ideal for: Startups that need someone to drive both user experience and visual design.

Web Designer (avg. $80,000/year)

• Pros: Web designers are crucial pieces for creating and maintaining a startup’s online presence by working on landing pages, e-commerce, or any digital marketing projects.
• Cons: Startups focused more on apps or software might find limited immediate use for this role, and web design needs can be outsourced in the beginning.
• Ideal for: Startups and scaleups that need a strong online brand presence or are reliant on a web-based product.

Brand Designer (avg. $85,000/year)

• Pros: Brand designers help startups build a cohesive identity. They contribute to marketing assets, logos, color schemes, and brand guidelines.
• Cons: If you already have a solid brand or are still building an MVP, a brand designer may not have much influence on the growth of your company.
• Ideal for: Startups and scaleups focused on creating or maintaining a recognizable brand identity.

Design Systems Lead or DesignOps Specialist (avg. $120,000/year)

• Pros: DesignOps specialists establish design systems, enabling smoother scaling and faster development as the startup grows. Their value scales in the long term.
• Cons: Implementing design systems requires upfront investment in time and resources, which might strain early-stage startups.
• Ideal for: Startups and scaleups anticipating rapid growth or needing a scalable, cohesive design framework.

Graphic Designer (avg. $72,420/year)

• Pros: Graphic designers are versatile and contribute to marketing assets, product packaging, social media, and even branding. They add creative value to projects.
• Cons: If the startup is more product-oriented, graphic design may be less critical in the early stages than UI/UX designers.
• Ideal for: Marketing-oriented startups or those who need a strong visual presence in competitive markets.

Motion Designer (avg. $90,000/year)

• Pros: Motion designers bring dynamism to a startup’s visual assets, adding animations that enhance user experience and bring more engagement from the content created.
• Cons: While this is an interesting role to have, it may not be crucial if your company is creating tech solutions in industries that don’t value visual engagement as much.
• Ideal for: Startups and scaleups looking to grow through high engagement in social media and other visual-centric channels.

Video Editor (avg. $75,000/year)

• Pros: Video editors are crucial for content-led startups, especially those leveraging video for marketing, tutorials, or social engagement.
• Cons: B2B startups focused more on product development than on direct consumer interaction may find that this role is not as necessary.
• Ideal for: Startups and scaleups that rely heavily on video content for customer acquisition or product tutorials, including those looking to find a long-form video editor through Awesomic for deeper content production.

Agencies and unlimited design services: Outsourcing for scaling DesignOps

Startups and Scaleups can benefit a ton from outsourcing their design initiatives. Two common ways to do so are with subscription design services companies and design agencies. Here’s a quick breakdown of each.

Subscription design services: For these companies, you contract them on a fixed price and at predictable monthly rates, averaging between $1,000 and $5,000 per month. Each company has its own expertise and terms. Some have hidden costs with fees or limits on revisions. This is perfect for startups and scaleups as they can alleviate their current design team's bandwidth, create high-quality design, and remain cost-effective — even bringing on a live stream video editor through Awesomic when the need arises. This also solves issues with tooling in DesignOps since most of these companies have a predetermined tech stack for their designers.

Design Agencies: Agencies can charge between $150 and $250 per hour. For instance, a website may cost anywhere between $3,000 and $50,000. This model can be more suitable for high-quality, short-term projects or very industry-specific projects with many moving parts.

Considering the average salary of a full-time designer, a small team can cost up to $200,000.00. Investing in design needs to go beyond just the immediate visuals for startups and scaleups. It has to impact customer experience, brand loyalty, and even conversion rates.

While saving money is always nice, measuring ROI for design is a big challenge to overcome, but it’s increasingly being backed by data. Research from UXMatters shows that companies prioritizing UX design see higher growth in revenue than their peers and can expect an ROI of $100 for every $1 invested.

Outsourcing design also aids in scaling by offering flexibility and cost-efficiency. According to a Statista report, over 47% of marketers outsourced design in 2022.

Awesomic for startups and scaleups: Boost your business with design

Awesomic knows well the pains and growing successes for startups and scaleups. We match our clients with vetted, creative talent, from no-code developers to brand designers and UI/UX specialists. And 4000+ companies trusted Awesomic with their creative projects.

Startups and scaleups need designs and creative solutions that are fast and cost-effective without sacrificing quality. Awesomic has created a savings calculator so you can see exactly how much you can save up by choosing us.

Awesomic can match you with top-tier talent with plans that range from $500/month for AI-powered landing page creation in Awesomic Studio to $2,995/month for broader design and creative support in the All-in-One plan to custom-priced options for startups and scaleups that need full-time collaboration through our 1-1 plan. There are no hidden costs; you pay monthly, and you get to work on as many tasks as possible for the month.

If you want to learn more about how Awesomic can help you achieve your business goals with support from a creative team, book a demo. We’ll explore your needs and come up with the perfect plan for you.

FAQs

How do you know when to shift from startup to scale up design?

Look for growing pains like slower hiring, more bugs, and rising support tickets. These signs usually mean your current lightweight design ops won’t keep up. You need more structure and better tools to keep everything running smoothly as you grow fast.

What are the main differences between startup vs scale up design teams?

Startups move fast with generalists wearing many hats. Scale ups need specialized roles, more rules, and clearer processes. This change helps handle complexity and keeps the quality high without burning out the team.

How can a scale up vs start up mindset affect leadership?

Startups often rely on founder decisions. Scale ups need leaders to delegate and build accountable teams. This shift makes sure no one person is a bottleneck, letting the company grow without chaos.

Why is it risky to keep using startup design methods during scale-up?

Using simple, informal methods when scaling can cause confusion and slow down releases. Without clear roles and automation, you risk mistakes piling up and losing customer trust, which is expensive and hard to fix later.

How should funding support changes in scale up design operations?

Funding should match your stage: early rounds focus on proving ideas; later rounds invest in systems and teams. Planning budgets with flexibility allows quicker hiring or subscriptions to external design help when needed.