Re:I lost $209,640 of my own money trying to start a business
by ly3xqhl8g9 on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @10:46AM
(#34596584)
Sure. Nevertheless, the "App development" budget for a startup with no users/clients should be $0, otherwise it's not a start-up, but more of a start-middle.
Re:I lost $209,640 of my own money trying to start a business
by jrochkind1 on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @10:57AM
(#34596749)
For sure you don't want to spend that kind of money without customers/clients yet. The problem with a software-based startup is... software development is expensive.
Not that contractors will rip you off charging too much for shoddy work -- although that happens, software is expensive even when it doesn't.
If you are paying a consultancy for the software development, you should probably plan on spending six figures in consultancy invoices to even get an MVP -- if you mean an actually working app by "MVP". That's not a lot at all. So... up to you to figure out how to verify your business model before you do that (with an "MVP" that isn't actually a working app yet perhaps), or have a business plan that accommodates it.
Let's say you're paying $200/hour to a software consultancy -- which isn't as much as it sounds, the engineers doing the work will not be making anything close to HN-bragging-level of take-home at that rate, although they'll be doing okay.
120,000 is 600 hours of work at $200/hour billed. So that might be two engineers working about 8 weeks.
Does two engineers working 8 weeks seem so crazy for developing a novel app, full-stack from back-end to design? Not at all.
Software is expensive.
Which means, sure, there's plenty of money in developing it!