"One thing we hear about a lot from our companies is that great designers are hard to come by," writes Tan. "We're trying to make that easier by putting together a list of preferred designers."
Y Combinator is including designers from many disciplines, including logo and branding experts, interaction designers, and visual/web designers. Designers are needed in remote, on-site, contract and full-time positions to work with Y Combinator's constantly growing portfolio of web startups, which includes alumni companies such as Loopt, Reddit, Scribd, Disqus, Dropbox, Justin.tv, Heroku, Posterous, DailyBooth and more.
Interested parties can apply for inclusion in the directory starting now. The directory will be in use beginning in February 2011.
Especially at very early-stage companies, there is a tendency to skimp on the more subtle niceties of design when the team is frantically trying to get a product to market. And very often, hybrid designer-developer founders find themselves wearing many hats as they work on a product in relative isolation.
Tan recently left his startup, Posterous, to work with a variety of early-stage startups at Y Combinator. As the incubator's DIR, Tan is acting as a sort of UI guru to the batches of early-stage startups and projects that come to the incubator. Launching a directory of hand-picked, top-notch designers to work with any startup in need of design help is an excellent first step.