Is it reasonable to seek a co-founder with skills in both design and front-end development?

Well, it pretty much depends on what you're looking for exactly. UX, visual design, HTML + CSS, JavaScript in one person I agree with that many front-end developers also have some sort of design-skills. But design is not simply just design. Often it's at least split into UX and visual design. There are some hybrids who can do both equally good but finding somebody who can do UX and visual design and front-end development (HTML + CSS) and JavaScript? This will be really tough to find in a single person. And I'm talking here about one person, who's really good at all of these disciplines. Of course it will be easier to find somebody, who's much better at one of the four - e.g. a front-end dev, who can also do visual design - but then the outcome will not be as good as it could be. Simply because UX should be a fundamental part of design and later implementation. If this is missing, the results will lack in some way. I would say to get started really fast and hit the ground running, try to find somebody who can do most of these 4 disciplines OK-ish and simply improve later step by step when things start to take off. Finding a co-founder Although many people out there only seem to think of tech co-founders only, when thinking of co-founders overall, rest assured there are lots of design co-founders out there, too. "Design is everything", as a former colleague once said and I agree. So, don't be shy thinking about finding a design co-founder or also a front-end dev co-founder. One way of finding a co-founder is to attend local meetups and startup events. But these local events tend to attract only locals and usually the same people show up after some time. Finding a co-founder online is the other way and Inc. recently published an article titled "http://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/5-tips-for-finding-the-perfect-co-founder.html" in which describes how Maida Fortune found her co-founder and now CTO, Abid Ali, on http://founder2be.com/ after considering peers from her MBA program and interviewing people she found at tech meet-ups first. At http://founder2be.com/ we're creating the largest co-founder finding platform out there with currently over 12,000 users. You could think of it as a mix of online dating and LinkedIn. Users can search for potential co-founders, they can connect, and they can find the perfect match for their startups. To get the ball rolling and potential co-founders interested, people can also share their ideas with as much or as little information as they want.

This a square-rectangle scenario... front end developers are almost always designers (or have a very good eye for it), while people who call themselves graphic designers usually can't develop. When your making a startup, regardless of your skillset and label in a company, everyone involved in the early days is going to be in the trenches doing a bit of stuff that you eventually don't want them to. So your faced with two solutions: hire two different people with different skillets and presumably lose more money/equity or hire one person who can do the job of both. This isn't just ok, this should be what you aim for. What I am not telling you to do is to find a half-ass designer and a half-ass programmer in one. Down the line your likely going to have to tell this person to consolidate into a more specific task. Having them not be awesome when it comes time to do a single thing, makes them a terrible hires in the long term. Having broad skillsets is not a unreasonable expectation at all. There are plenty of full stack developers out there so the complimenting skills your asking for will not be difficult to find.