Month-by-month feed of what shifted, who was hiring, and how Starter, Scaler, and Titan teams actually worked.
51 synthesized monthsin the data layer. Stage breakdowns (Starter / Scaler / Titan) are available for 2026 only — earlier months show under the All segment but won’t appear under stage filters until the design-context pipeline runs further back.
Viewing future quarters under the Agents Skip Designers worldview. For companies under 20 people, a designer never gets hired. Founders prompt agents directly, ship fast enough, and the work is good enough. The designer's role at the small end of the market disappears entirely.
One person, full stack, ships everything
Midjourney → Figma → v0
Vibe-coding closed the gap between design and production; the founder's designer has to live in both or they're half useful.
First real design team, already fighting agent sprawl
Figma → v0 → Runway
At this stage the system is what keeps agent output coherent; the person who owns that system owns every screen the company ships.
Design governance is now a product requirement
Runway → Figma → Storybook
At scale, taste and judgment applied to machine output is the lever — the director who can steer agent work across an org is worth more than any single executor.