  Over the last 20 years, a very large number of startups have been launched,
ranging from mobile application and game providers to enormous corporations
that have started as tiny startups. Startups are an important topic for
research and development. The fundamentals of success are the characteristics
of individuals and teams, partner investors, the market, and the speed at which
everything evolves. Startup's business environment is fraught with uncertainty,
as actors tend to be young and inexperienced, technologies either new or
rapidly evolving, and team-combined skills and knowledge either key or fatal.
As over 90 per cent of software startups fail, having a capable and reliable
team is crucial to survival and success.
  Many aspects of this topic have been extensively studied, and the results of
the study on human capital are particularly important. Regarding human capital
abilities, such as knowledge, experience, skills, and other cognitive
abilities, this dissertation focuses on design skills and their deployment in
startups. Design is widely studied in artistic and industrial contexts, but its
application to startup culture and software startups follows its own method
prison. In the method prison, old and conventional means are chosen instead of
new techniques and demanding design studies. This means that when a software
startup considers design as a foundation for creativity and generating better
offerings, they can grab any industry with a disruptive agenda, making anything
software-intensive.
