We're working with someone who is a friend of my co-founder's, but if we had no inexpensive contacts with the design community I would consider a very cheap opt

We're working with someone who is a friend of my co-founder's, but if we had no inexpensive contacts with the design community I would consider a very cheap option. (I don't believe in spec work, but I wouldn't hesitate to hire a student or offshore, or to use Themeforest for that matter.) It isn't that I don't respect the results that a great designer can provide, but I don't have the budget for it. Thus, I'm handling the User Experience, and depending on the designer to provide the graphics because I am inefficient in Illustrator and Photoshop, and I don't want to spend the money for legal copies. (I use Gimp and Inkscape but I'm very inefficient none the less.) 99Designs isn't paying for design as much as paying for a set of graphics that can be used. Great design is for people who have money. Now, it so happens that I'm focused on front end work and I've worked with good UX people in the past, so I am ahead of the game on UX, but this is the trade off that most startups will make.