I know many. Dustin Curtis is one. Its more common than you think. The idea that you can hire your way into good design / good user experience is pretty tough

I know many. Dustin Curtis is one. Its more common than you think. The idea that you can hire your way into good design / good user experience is pretty tough to implement though. If your founding team doesn't have a great visual and user experience designer to begin with, how are you going to evaluate the new hire? It's like a nontechnical founder hiring a software engineer. Can be done, but fraught with danger.