I understand. Generally, we should aim to build tools that address the greatest gaps in quality. You might say that design is currently not the most important gap to address, and that may be, although it hasn't been my experience. Although design has been getting a lot of attention in recent years, the tools for design are still very much in their infancy.

If you contrast the availability of design tools to say, development tools, I'm pretty sure you'll agree there's a huge gap there. I grant that there has been a recent surge in UX/sketching tools, but so many areas of design are still left untouched. Recently, for example, I was very excited by discovering http://macrabbit.com/slicy/ and http://iconfactory.com/software/xscope - both solve problems many designers have, and they both make my designer life so much easier.

Perhaps to return to your original point - the world is full of people who follow trends blindly. I run an app development company, and if I had a nickel for every time someone asked me to build an app that no one needs, well, you know the end of that saying. Still, if you're going to follow trends without good thinking, 'invest in design' is by far not the worst you could follow.