That was a very weird argument in that case. 'Cos i'm a dev, and truly understand the value of designers(since i don't have the talent or haven't spent as much

That was a very weird argument in that case. 'Cos i'm a dev, and truly understand the value of designers(since i don't have the talent or haven't spent as much time on it). Also a reason most people don't take on designers on board is that design is fairly broad in iterations. Quite a lot of successful startups probably hire a designer to finish a design(plus a couple of iterations on it). But the involvement of the dev side is more granular, and continuous till the end. Ofcourse most companies when they take off, do bring a full time designer on board.