Advice for hiring a freelancer to develop a website
Due to time constraints I decided to find and hire a freelance developer for an upcoming website that I've designed. I plan on going to a place like Upwork (or whatever similar site) and asking for bids on the project. I have a pretty good idea of the technologies needed (e.g., React or Angular, Firebase), plus have Sketch design files to give to the person.
I've used Upwork to hire for various small tasks (and asked for an NDA once or twice) but this project has a bigger scope. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm thinking "it would be so easy for this person or agency to just take my design files and steal my idea." Maybe a paranoid thought, I know, but I was wondering if anyone has advice for the types of documents I should require: NDA + other contracts? Is my fear somehow justified?
I suppose that the geographical location of the freelancer may also play role - the current NDA I use, and which seems to be bulletproof, was drawn up by a US lawyer, so maybe I should stay with hiring within the US.
I think this is quite a common fear in clients. As a freelancer, this is a bit absurd though, I am interested in working with you to create a relationship that will be mutually beneficial for both of us. Doing something like what you are in fear of, would ruin that relationship and potentially create a bad rep for me.
You are also the person with the plan and idea. If I was to try and steal it, I would not do the product justice because I would not have the domain knowledge that you would. Therefore, I would not be able to get the product to a state you could.
All my clients have asked for that NDA at the start but they have also seen me, face to face and know who I am. I think having that personal connection helps to establish that trust. So maybe you could try and establish that with the developer you seek.
Thanks, this helps. Are there generally any other types of agreements for this situation besides an NDA?
When you are doing NDA and the likes, it would be wise to consider whether it's feasible for the NDA to take effect, should your secret is exposed by the development team.
If you have the dev team to sign an NDA, and you don't have the financial power to sue them or the value of the project simply doesn't warrant you spending tens of thousand dollars to sue them, then a NDA is useless.
Good point - in the end, an NDA might serve more a psychological purpose than any practical one. It does give me some peace of mind though (somehow).
Anyway, thinking about it more (and reading the replies here), there's probably nothing to worry about. It's great to talk with someone about it though. Thanks!
I'm running a JS focused software dev company and let me share you my hints for you, while hiring a freelancer or software development company.
If you hiring a freelancer:
*Get somebody recommended or with great reviews – He / She will not disappear when difficulties appear
*Be aware that with rates below $30 (depends on the county - check the freelancers rates) will make it difficult to get a good coded application without any technical debt
*Try to find a developer, who will be focused only on 1-2 projects maximum
*Define your clear goals and tasks (learn how to write user stories)
*Sign a contract with a freelancer and remember to include that you will own the code/you have the full rights to it (in some cases after the job is finished, you could be asked to pay the license fee for the software you paid for...)
If you need an NDA, you can use this one ->> http://www.startupcommons.org/confidentiality-agreement--nda.html
Here is a checklist with tips that helped me personally to evaluate a freelancer or dev shop to build my previous ventures ->> https://brainhub.eu/blog/choose-software-development-company/
Don't want to make here any advertisement, but if you are so stressed about somebody stealing your product - hire an agency to do it, because they have to much to lose by stealing a product...
However in most of the cases, I wouldn't be so afraid about a freelancer (+$30 per hour) stealing your concept.
Awesome checklist. Will check out your site.
I think the best way is to break up the bigger scope project into smaller tasks to either assign these tasks to multiple freelancers or to "progressively" assign the tasks to one freelancer. Frankly, I believe the latter is the worse of the two because you rarely will find someone who is good at everything. The first option also protects your idea to be stolen by a freelancer you hire. Hope this helps.
Good advice - I'm already thinking about how to break this up into parts and distribute them out to different freelancers.
Hey - I'm building http://MoonlightWork.com. We're helping companies increase momentum by hiring expert software engineers as part-time consultants.
At my last startup, I was in a similar situation. We had designs done , but we couldn't find reliabile contractors who had availability and knew some of the advanced tech we wanted to use (like Redux). The full-time contractors seemed to be junior and hard to trust, and making full-time hires took months. So, we started hiring friends as part-time consultants. This got us engineers from top companies like Uber and Facebook.
Moonlight now has a network of 800+ engineers, and we have a comprehensive contractor agreement that includes confidentiality and assignment. You can break the project into multiple separate tasks, e.g. hiring a different contractor for each page, which would help you to ship faster and divide responsibilities.
If you're interested in trying it out, shoot me an email (philip at moonlightwork.com).
P.S. Assignment is the most important part of a contractor agreement. You can pay somebody to build something, but that doesn't mean that you own it unless you have an assignment agreement.
I'm currently trying to understand the different kinds of agreements beyond NDAs. To your last point ("Assignment"), could it be that a software development contract is the appropriate agreement: https://agencyattorneys.com/services/software-development-contracts/ ?
If it's a general website this is a none issue. If it's a web application your concern is legitimate. Since you are thinking about using a tech stack that involves angular, I'm going to assume you are building the latter. First let me say this. I have spent many hours on elance and have probably spent 40-50k over the years for various things. One thing I would never do is hire a developer for a legitimate and possibly significant revenue generating saas web application from elance/Upwork if the developer is in China, Russia or India. Your NDA means shit and is not even enforceable. If you have to leverage Upwork make sure your developer is in the US, UK or Australia. One final point - Do you know your way around angular or react? If not, how will you even know whether or not the code you are being given is even functional beyond some limited use? You won't. Take a look at toptal. Higher cost but Significantly higher quality developers, they stand behind the code their freelancers deliver and they have a reciprocal NDA. If this is more than a MVP and you think you have validated the market opportunit, do it right. Only use Upwork for the most basic of tasks.
Yeah it's a web app - there will be tons of filtering and search capabilities. I'm not as concerned anymore about confidentiality- it's my first "digital product" so I was trying to imagine all the scenarios. And yes, I agree that I will hire out of countries where such a contract can be enforced, at least in theory.
About the app, it's not a SaaS or anything like that; it'll be free for all to use but I naturally hope it'll be successful enough to monetize in the future (so from my viewpoint it's a MVP). Regarding my profile, I'm a career tech writer who's done web design and development along the way (coded apps in Angular) and I will need to maintain this project after the developer hands it off to me. As I've got this project well broken down into modules (in my head at least, so far), I was initially thinking about going to a site like Upwork, but will definitely give a hard look at the others mentioned in this thread as quality is important to me.
Wishing you all the best and looking forward to seeing your story here on indiehackers :)
Definitely! Cheers