The entire purpose of a startup is to redesign some aspect of the user's life. A startup takes some experience in the world that has low usability, and makes that aspect of your life more usable. Having a founder with a design background, meaning someone who actually understands usability and how to simplify experiences CAN fix your broken business, assuming that the purpose of your business is to simplify some experience and make it more usable, which is what pretty much all businesses are. Additionally, the UI is not "just pixels" any more than a song is just "a C and a D chord" or a table is "just wood". The interface is the means through which the user problem is solved. From the user's perspective, the interface is the app -- the entirety of the app -- nothing other than the interface exists. And the user's perspective is the only one that matters.
Now, does this mean you can have a founding team without a developer? No, of course not. You need a technical founder. You should have a designer, a developer, and a hustler/biz person, but those don't need to be three separate people; one person can embody several of those qualities.
The entire purpose of a startup is to redesign some aspect of the user's life. A startup takes some experience in the world that has low usability, and makes that aspect of your life more usable. Having a founder with a design background, meaning someone who actually understands usability and how to simplify experiences CAN fix your broken business, assuming that the purpose of your business is to simplify some experience and make it more usable, which is what pretty much all businesses are. Additionally, the UI is not "just pixels" any more than a song is just "a C and a D chord" or a table is "just wood". The interface is the means through which the user problem is solved. From the user's perspective, the interface is the app -- the entirety of the app -- nothing other than the interface exists. And the user's perspective is the only one that matters.
Now, does this mean you can have a founding team without a developer? No, of course not. You need a technical founder. You should have a designer, a developer, and a hustler/biz person, but those don't need to be three separate people; one person can embody several of those qualities.