Founder usually knows what they want the product to contain. Sometimes they even have a rough idea of how a screen should work. I do not treat that first requirement as the final answer. Before designing, I understand what user actually needs/wants to do.
For example, on operations product, request for dashboard might actually about helping someone delayed shipments, decide which need attention, and take action quickly.
Those details matter more to me than deciding which cards or charts should be on screen. I worked both ways. When I start with requested design, I usually end up making more changes later because workflow was not clear enough. so I spend more time understanding task before I start designing screen. It saves me from designing wrong thing first.
