Spent the last few years designing SaaS products for early-stage founders, and the pattern is always the same: teams jump straight to Figma before they've nailed the user flow.

Here's what actually matters before you open a design tool:

1. Map the core loop first. Before any pixels, write out the single path a user takes from signup to their "aha" moment. If you can't describe it in 3 steps, your product isn't focused enough yet — and no amount of polish will fix that.

2. Steal structure, not style. Linear, Stripe, and Vercel didn't win on visual flair — they won on information hierarchy. Look at how they group actions, not just their color palettes.

3. Design systems save you 10x the time later. Even a tiny MVP should have a token-based system (spacing, type scale, color roles) from day one. Retrofitting this after your first 50 users is painful and expensive.

4. Dev handoff is a design decision. If your components aren't built with real constraints (padding, breakpoints, states), your engineers will rebuild half of it from scratch — and your "finished" design becomes a suggestion.

If you're pre-seed/seed and about to design your MVP, happy to share more specifics — building Kenshiro Design Studio around exactly this problem.