Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:36:49 · Aaron Epstein, Stephen Haney
[00:36:49] S1: A lot of pills. A lot of icons. [00:36:50] S0: Yeah. And and, you know, and, of course, the purple gradient. Yeah. Yeah. You know, linear made this style great, and then I think it got encoded into the models for the next, you know... [00:36:59] S1: Yeah. I mean, I... That's one of the things that's interesting is in isolation, these things are not bad. It's just when they're overused and you see it all the time, to your point, it doesn't stand out. Yeah. And it looks sloppy. Design is always evolving. The standards are always evolving. The baseline is always evolving, and you always have to be... Stay ahead of that. Yeah. Otherwise, you know, you just... You look like an average thing, and the average thing is not exceptional. And that's not something people are excited to use. [00:37:27] S0: And I think it's hard to build a great company if you have a mediocre [00:37:30] S1: Yeah. [00:37:31] S0: Presentation to the world. It even it even impacts who you hire and who's attracted to your company for recruiting or the talent you can, you know, attract. So it's worth being intentional. [00:37:38] S1: Alright. Let's take a look at, Moreta here. Pay like a local via QR codes, a global wallet that unlocks local QR payments across Asia and Latin America. Okay. So we've got a bunch of flags, which I think indicates lots of countries. It's a payments thing, and I get a little nervous. A payments thing that looks vibe coded.
00:37:38 · Aaron Epstein, Stephen Haney
[00:37:38] S1: Alright. Let's take a look at, Moreta here. Pay like a local via QR codes, a global wallet that unlocks local QR payments across Asia and Latin America. Okay. So we've got a bunch of flags, which I think indicates lots of countries. It's a payments thing, and I get a little nervous. A payments thing that looks vibe coded. [00:38:04] S0: Yeah. Again, the the credibility of your brand is really important, especially if you're dealing with finances. Here's another example of, like, pull up the content. You know, get your good content above the fold. I kind of like the energy of this site even though some of it is a little... It's a little too wild. It's a little too all over the place. It's sloppy. But I can tell it has this... Like, it's trying to suggest this this global feeling, which I think is really cool. Before... Oh, I love this, how it works. [00:38:29] S1: Yeah. This is cool. [00:38:30] S0: Get that up too. You know, I had to scroll pretty far to get there. [00:38:32] S1: Yeah. And and this just looks a lot cleaner and more professional also [00:38:36] S0: It does. [00:38:36] S1: Yeah. Which makes me trust it more.
00:38:36 · Aaron Epstein, Stephen Haney
[00:38:36] S1: Yeah. Which makes me trust it more. [00:38:38] S0: Absolutely. So before... I I ran this one through Paper real quick before we came on just to... All I asked it was actually to pull back and just just create create a a foundation for this site that is a little more professional and a little more trustworthy. And we used 5.5 on this, and this is kind of what it came up with. And I actually think, in this case, it lost a little of the excitement of the original design. But that's where you're in a design tool, and now you can come in and bring that back yourself. But I do think this gives you a little bit more of a foundation. Again, way too much text. [00:39:06] S1: Yes, way too much text. [00:39:07] S0: Pull back on some of these things. But I think it gives you a little bit more of a foundation. And again, you can come in and delete some of the vibe coded stuff. Less is less is more. That's what I would try to do with this site is is keep the excitement, keep this kind of, like, international feeling. I like that. It's it's it's unique. But you can't go so far. You know, maybe this text gradient is a little too wild and and doesn't feel super trustworthy. But I do I do like the the value prop, and I understand what it is for the most part, pretty quickly, which I like. [00:39:35] S1: I like that they've got a QR code in the bottom right. [00:39:37] S0: Which is part of the product. Right? It's like Yeah. [00:39:39] S1: Yeah. Which is cool. That's something that I I haven't seen very much before.
00:39:39 · Aaron Epstein, Stephen Haney
[00:39:39] S1: Yeah. Which is cool. That's something that I I haven't seen very much before. [00:39:43] S0: It makes me wanna interact with it. Yeah. It's inviting. Yep. Yeah. The overall feeling, the vibe is... If we can make it a little more trustworthy [00:39:49] S1: Yeah. [00:39:49] S0: But I like the excitement. I like the energy. I like the invitation that I have. [00:39:53] S1: Yeah. It's almost too easy to miss it down in that corner, though, too, because, you know, you're so used to seeing the chat with us box down, and you just assume there's a bunch of things that you should ignore. There... Unless you have a problem, like, that's where you look. And I don't know. Maybe they should bring that QR code up to the main area and say, try it now. [00:40:08] S0: Speedy the... In the hero. Yeah. Yeah. I do. I feel like this hero could be working a lot harder for them. Yeah. Because when when I start getting down here, I'm like, yeah. This is this is solid. It seems to get more trustworthy the further you go. Mhmm. [00:40:19] S1: Yeah. It it is interesting your point that, you know, at the end of the day, the models are the ones that are generating the design, when you use them to generate the design. And you're kind of at the mercy for how... Like, what they've been trained on and how they like to design. [00:40:35] S0: Yes. Yeah.
00:40:35 · Stephen Haney, Aaron Epstein
[00:40:35] S0: Yes. Yeah. [00:40:36] S1: And so what's important is using the right models and the... Those models getting better at design, which will inevitably happen over time. And then the next thing that you need is just more control over it quickly. Yeah. And so to have that control, to be able to edit it, and make it more in your own vision is actually the really powerful missing piece here that I think is is a lot of what Paper is providing right here. [00:40:58] S0: The agents can speed you up. They can save you a lot of work, and they can do tasks like translation or resizing for you. But we're big believers in the human element of design and and how important that is. And so we're trying to create a tool that lets humans work really fast with agents. [00:41:11] S1: Do you think the agents can learn taste in the same [00:41:15] S0: way that a human can? They'll get better at things like letter space. The the little tactical things will get better [00:41:21] S1: Yeah.
00:41:21 · Aaron Epstein, Stephen Haney
[00:41:21] S1: Yeah. [00:41:21] S0: Over time. And I think what I'm encouraged by is a model like Fable seems much more thoughtful. It feels like it actually put some thought into its decisions compared to previous models. And so I think that is a piece of design, is that thoughtfulness. Now, do I ever think it's going to replace a human making these design decisions? No, no way. Because a lot of design is actually a very human task of decision making in an organization. It's showing people comps and being and people can be like, oh, not like that. I don't like that. The role of design is you see the pixels at the end, but the role of design in an org is decisions and stakeholders and bringing in requirements and problem space. And those are not things that agents have any skill at, really. Who knows over time? They're going to get smarter and smarter and smarter. But I just think humans are just such an essential piece of building stuff that stands out Right. From the crowd.