- For slightly more legal protection, the code should be in YOUR OWN git repo, not the dev agency's repo
- If you are giving some upfront $ or milestone payment, you should also contractually now own the code up to that point in time
- You should not declare a milestone success (and should not pay) until you can independently compile the app straight from git (front end and backend) (Also, watch out for hard-coded domains where you are secretly pointing to their backend and not to your independently compiled one)
- App QA should ONLY be on the version of the app where you compiled/deployed the full stack yourself
- You should deploy the app into your own cloud to ensure you actually have all the pieces. Super extra credit: Build Terraform/Ansible/Chef into the SoW and final payment should depend on deployment into your own environment by YOU (not the agency)
- You should learn how to build/compile/deploy yourself or hire an independent person (not the devs) who can do this for you
That said, I did present two ideas for those who want to venture into this:
- You recognize that the "success" you have in the working app isnt actually a success and plan accordingly
- You hire someone independent who keeps the third parties honest
Another one:
- You cut corners, get a working demo, raise good VC funds and hire a well-compensated technical co-founder or founding engineer who is compensated sufficiently to be happy short term and has sufficient equity to want long term success
But the whole discussion was what non-technical founders would do, and this is probably the second-best advice I could give. Moreso, to recognize the myriad risks and understand things arent quite as easy as posting a project on Upwork.
Te first-best advice I could give is to get a technical co-founder.
Why hire people who don’t care that much to build something the founders definitely care a lot about?
Are there any examples of this working out or are these the 90% of startups that fail?
Personally I’m very technical and I think the best for me would be a partner who is non technical to help me with marketing and sales (something I have no experience in). Would that sort of duo be the best? I can build whatever mobile web backend AI algo shit. That’s easy for me. For my partner I would prefer they are the same level of competence in their side of things.
The main problem was, he didn't really know what he wanted (non-technical).
He asked me to sit in on a couple of his enquiries to developer agencies.
It was a shitshow.
I had respect for the one chap that basically said "Get back to me, when you know exactly what you want."
I had absolutely zero respect for the agency that said they would deliver a full MVP, in three months.
After that, I just said "Screw this. You'll just get ripped off. I was looking for something to work on, so it might as well be this."
It's been a long process, but we are now in the home stretch. I don't even want to think about how badly he would have been screwed, and I'm quite un-thrilled with the ethics of the folks that claimed they could deliver the app in three months (fairly large-scale backend, and high-quality frontends for mobile clients).
It probably would have been quite different, and I guarantee that they would have come up with some bolierplate crap that they had their offshore devs whip up for next to nothing.
The demographic we're Serving has some very particular needs, they don't have much money (501c3 means nonprofit, if you are not familiar with the designation), but there's tremendous sensitivity in how the data is handled, and also in how the UI is presented. Small features will make (or break) the app.
Long story, and not one I'm particularly interested in sharing, at the moment.
It's all good.
BTW: I'm not working for "cheap." I'm working for free. I'm enjoying it.
It's very easy to come up with vague, hand-wavy "big pictures," and a different matter, entirely, to make it happen. Those "details" will kill you.
That's why having not just a technical founder, but one that has experience shipping is important (IMNSHO).
I offered to rewrite the entire thing from scratch for a flat rate 15k and some equity but was turned down. Last I heard they were about 100k in by the time it "launched" and it shuttered maybe 6 months later. So this guy burned 100k but more importantly about 2.5 years of his life on this thing while a bunch of terrible devs and a charlatan CEO made off like bandits.
This is so important if you want to maintain a good relationship. I'm working with a client who has very little money and while the system he wants is almost trivially simple, he's funding it out of his own pocket. After he initially was bouncing from "cool idea" to "cool idea" and had a heart attack at my very reasonable price, I told him to take a step back and write down the most important features and I'd quote that.
He did that, I built it and he loves it. Now he wants version 2 and we're back to the "wouldn't it be great if..." all over again. Sure, it would, but you already said you can't afford all that crap. Now I'm back to the "stop. Think about what you really need, forget the cool IoT features and focus on the basics then get back to me."
Sorry, needed to vent :-)
Because people dismiss engineers as low-value, until they painfully realize otherwise. It is the same reason Google/Facebook/Stripe did so well compared to other companies -- because Google/Facebook/Stripe realized the strategic value of engineers and compensated them well and aligned with long-term interests. Other companies cut Engineers and constantly squeezed them until they realized (too late) that they had no strategic power left. The stock market over the past two decades is a fantastic A/B test on people strategy and success.
To be realistic, there is one good reason to outsource dev -- it is to very quickly get a demo-able MVP so you can get funding. You have to recognize that the demo-able MVP is most likely throw-away and you have to be ready to re-build from scratch once you get funding for your own team.
We had a technical CTO that really wrangled everyone, but he left not soon after we got bought out, dev has been a shitshow ever since.
The recliner I bought 2 years ago has an iOS app that basically works, but has many flaws. It's clear the company does not have the source code. The developer, in the app store, has a name with Chinese characters and the company is based in the US. It was right after the pandemic, that I bought it, and complained to their support. I was still in the window of returning it for a full refund, so they told me "we'll get right on that" and fix the problem I reports. Almost 2 years later and not a single update to the app.
EDIT: company is Human Touch, chair is the Gravis ZG.
EDIT2: sorry, it was the Copyright message that was in Chinese. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gravis-chair/id1435036207
Last update Apr 2020.
As a technical CTO I can smell this a mile away and work it into SoWs, but I wonder how many non-technical co-founders fall into this trap.
When you need updates or Phase II, now the rates go up massively. No one else can change it and the outsourced dev agency now has a monopoly. Usually the non-technical CEO/founder will now have to find a new agency, who might pull the same trick or some variation of it. It can be subtle:
- You have no code
- You have code, but it wont compile
- You have code, it will compile, but not into the version you're declared success with
- You have code to the client/app, but not to the backend