Roles and teams
Company stage
Also calledSeed, Series A, Growth stage, Scale-up
Where a company is in its life, from finding product-market fit to running many teams on one product. Each stage needs a different design team.
At seed and Series A, the product is still finding its shape. Speed of learning matters more than consistency, so design time goes to exploration, prototypes and talking to users.
In the growth stage (roughly Series B to D) the product works but the organisation does not yet. Design needs a balanced mix, and the first specialists and managers usually arrive.
At scale, many teams work on one surface. The cost of coordination outweighs the cost of craft, so more of the team's time goes to systems, quality control and alignment.