Fun rant. I wish he defined what exactly he means by design. (Amusing exercise: replace all occurrences of 'design' with 'blub'.) The core of the post for me was:

> Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing. A product or service that is indispensably useful yet looks like ass is infinitely more likely to be successful than a product that solves zero problems but looks like a work of art.

I'd say sure, in general, though that does beg the question for what problems so many "useless" but successful apps solve. (Mindless entertainment, I guess.) More importantly, though, "design" and functionality and usefulness are not at odds.

For some fun (probably less comprehensible) rantings in the other direction, have a look at http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2011/05/engineers-are-infe... and http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2011/06/design-principles-...