Why Startups Shouldn’t Always Build Design Systems From Scratch
Jacob Olenick
Lead Product Designer, Design Systems | ✨ I help UX Designers by posting career tips and content about working as an IC UX Designer.
I'm expanding on a post I shared earlier today in this newsletter article.
Design systems are a powerful way to ensure consistency and scalability in your product. But for startups, the decision to build a system from scratch can sometimes do more harm than good. When you're working in an environment where time and resources are limited, starting with an off-the-shelf design system can be the smarter path forward.
For a startup I worked with, we faced the challenge of creating a unified design language without slowing down our development timelines. Instead of building a design system from scratch, we chose to adopt a pre-built system—something like Tailwind CSS and tailored it to our needs. This approach allowed us to focus on refining the core user experience while maintaining visual consistency across the product.
The benefits were clear: we launched faster, avoided the steep upfront investment of creating everything ourselves, and had the flexibility to customize the system as our needs evolved. For startups, where agility is key, this approach ensures you're spending more time solving user problems and less time reinventing the wheel.
Not every company or product requires a completely bespoke solution. Sometimes, the best design decision is knowing when to lean on existing resources. If you're at a startup, ask yourself: can an off-the-shelf system get you where you need to go faster? Chances are, the answer is yes.
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Consultant | Product Design & Design Systems
1moI often think of a design system from an end-to-end perspective, and I agree with this. The catch is with many off the shelf design systems on the engineering side is: Eventually, when it launches a major new release, it breaks backward compatibility, and the engineering team will be stuck with a third party DS that is no longer adding new features. This doesn’t mean it’s wrong to go third-party in the early days—it just means have a plan for how to transition over to owning the DS when the right time comes. I really like the conceptual approach advocated by Shadcn UI. They have a library of React components built with Tailwinds, and they use Radix as a dependency for handling all the invisible, functionality-driven parts. But the visual parts… those are just copied into the product’s source code. Your team gets a head start on the visual part… but it gets ownership of that look and feel moving forward. That seems like best of both worlds, to me!
UX Designer | "Product Therapist" | Currently UX Designer at Oorah
1moIt's actually smarter to do so! It saves so much time and effort!
Product Designer | Empowering Tech Startups
1moThat is true. There’s actually a dark side to building design systems too early which can stall dev. Since I’ve worked on many different design systems, I have my own design system template that I customize for each new start up I work with. I would say there are tradeoffs however. Sometimes its easier to use a design system template and customize it to the particular usecase, other times its easier to design unique components. Starting small is always best for startups.
Delivery Head | Project Management Specialist | Agile
1mousing existing design systems can save time and energy for small teams. customization is key. what’s your go-to system?
Product Designer · Design Systems · 5x Design Award Winner · Open to relocation
1moWell said! Jacob Olenick