Being a non-technical solo founder just won't work
I've previously written about my experiences outsourcing development for my app, Neatly, but I hit a crossroads in my journey as a non-technical solo entrepreneur.
After failing for 2.5 years to recruit a technical cofounder for Neatly (actually recruited two who quit before they started), I bit the bullet and paid for Neatly's development.
Outsourcing development is fine to get your MVP built. I was able to succeed on ProductHunt & Betalist, get 600+ users, including some massive companies, but this is no way to run a business.
Why doesn't this work? Because outsourcing is expensive.
I never had enough money to pay for all of the features I needed or to develop them enough. Because of the investment issue, it's taken nearly 10 months to move past the MVP.
I'd eat my heart out every time a new user would signup knowing that they're only getting the MVP.
I was also nervous about the tech all of the time.
What happens if the app crashes on the weekend? Who's going to fix it?
There's no way for me to verify if the code is performant, secure or following best practices. I just have to take the agency's word for it.
Sometimes you have to face reality and understand that a startup isn't something you can do alone if you're not technical enough.
For me, I've realized this and I'm lucky enough to have now partnered with an experienced technical co-founder.
This is a reality many non-technical founders run into.
Outsourcing can absolutely help get an MVP into users' hands, but once feedback starts coming in, speed of iteration becomes everything. Every small change, bug fix, or new feature suddenly has a cost and a dependency.
I've seen founders spend months validating an idea only to get stuck translating customer feedback into development tickets.
One thing that helps is having a long-term product and engineering strategy from day one, whether that's a technical co-founder, an internal team, or a partner that can support the product beyond the MVP stage.
That's a big reason why at Foundersbar we focus not just on building products, but on helping startups create a sustainable path from MVP to scale: https://foundersbar.com/fractional-cto-services-for-startups
Congrats on finding the right technical co-founder. That can be a game-changing milestone.
I think about this a lot. I've had bad outsourcing experiences and also a great one.
My painful outsourcing experiences were from my old day job before I knew how to code - I was PMing with an offshore development team. It was laborious writing down detailed requirements, managing the time difference, sometimes they would tell me things weren't possible that I would later find out were possible - just hard. I mocked up a bad screenshot of where I wanted a button, they would literally screenshot my screenshot and drop that in there (vs. creating a native button, etc.).
On the other hand, outsourcing can be powerful if you yourself know enough to be dangerous and can ascertain code readability / quality and can fix any bugs that arise from the other developer's work. I did eventually outsource a few features to an Android developer in Vietnam who was quite good and got leverage that way.
My story though: 2 years ago I quit my job, started my SaaS journey and had an app in mind I wanted built - I had previously dabbled with a little bit of Javascript and did SQL at my old job, but that was the extent of my "coding" experience. So my first week, I tried to find a US-based developer on Upwork and got zero responses.
I ended up buying a $10 Udemy course and, with the help of some open source examples, within a few weeks had a working prototype. I think when one is motivated enough and has a tolerance for discomfort, you can really surprise yourself in terms of what you can accomplish.
All that said, I don't have a version of myself that outsourced the whole tech side that I can A/B myself against, but I do believe I'm much better off having done it this way.
You spoke to the outsourcing cost which I think would have been gargantuan, and the fear of something breaking over the weekend which are definitely real. The other aspects I think about:
UI for new features. In my mind sometimes I have an idea of how something should work, and then I actually start building the UI and quickly realize it doesn't make sense or there's a better way. But if an agency were building on my behalf, they would likely follow the requirement as I'd written it, and then I'd get it back and within seconds realize, whoops. And there goes more money.
Related to the above, being able to actually quickly pivot/modify your product based on customer feedback because the first version didn't hit the mark. I remember I put the first version of my app in a customer's hands and they told me it wasn't quite right. I was able to then revise it and put another version in their hands fairly quickly - I might have just given up if I'd have to shell out more money to make it happen
And lastly, depending on what your product is, there is a lot of times pure experimentation involved (whether with code, third party APIs, hardware, etc.) to figure out if something is even feasible. A hired gun will never obsess over your product and its possibilities as much as you, and so therefore if you can yourself dive in and tinker, you help push your product to its fullest potential.
Have you tried Figma or similar for some wireframing to even faster test UI/UX and reduce costs/rework/faster itterations?
I haven't, but I've seen it used before and it looks super slick. As just a one person shop, I don't mind just hand sketching stuff and then going for it.
I highly recommend you to learn Figma. You can build interactive prototypes and user-test...very very easy to learn and will save you money and time.
Your first bullet happened to me a couple of times... painful.
I've been lucky that the agency I work with has made lots of good suggestions.
Can I ask how much you've paid that agency to date for you MVP?
The version available today cost about $20k. If I were to continue outsourcing it would probably cost close to $50k to reach a true v1.
That's basically what it cost ConvertKit to get to it's first $5k MRR. https://saasmarketer.io/saas-business-growth/
Thanks for sharing (both your cost and also this ConvertKit article)!
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Hi @billyattar,
As a freelance coder that worked for founders in the past a few times, I agree that finding a good developer you can trust is hard. There are a lot of agencies and freelancers that provide work that is far from the state of the art.
You also have to find someone who understands the life of a startup and know the difference between a prototype, a mvp or a full-blown product, and invests just the correct amount of effort to save you as much money as possible.
If you absolutely need to outsource technical tasks, my advice would be hiring an experienced freelancer with a good track record. It will be expensive, but at least you'll know what you are paying for.
If that can make you feel better, now that I'm a technical solo-founder, I feel like it does not work either :)
Completely agree. The agency did a good job, but it only makes sense up until the MVP. You need someone dedicated to transition to full-blown product. That's why I brought in a co-founder, it's a big weight off my shoulders.
I don't speak French, but your project looks pretty good!
I like the way pricing tabs are named 'Neat', 'Neater'..
I think it should be $10/month instead of $10/mo in pricing table, not a big difference but just for the sake of uniformity
Thanks for the feedback, good idea
Great product. Love the design, awesome landing page. And most importantly fair - "Good software shouldn’t be expensive".
Now that you're up running, how do you spend your time, on Neatly and outside it?
Thanks! Neatly is running with a big release this coming week. I handle marketing and product strategy on nights & weekends while working a full time job.
Despite being around for a while, I still haven't started marketing it yet. So now I'm just preparing to start.
Development is expensive. (It's time consuming, knowledge intensive, fast changing, competitive...)
For any concerns on verifying a thing there are services... For web performance there are many free options for example. Security usually is more of a paid thing, there are so bug bounty ones where you pay only for confirmed issues.
Just know that no single person does great at all the thing around development as a superstar... there are tons of details and angles.
GL
Agree, but even as a somewhat technical marketer, I'm clueless about this stuff. You need a developer by your side if you want to run a software company.
I do wonder at times if a technical mind is just reserved for developers
Like thinking up the right questions, and asking them of people or of google
And consuming and digesting the resulting information
I know good developers need a strong skill in that, but I don't think they are the only ones able to
You need a technical mind on the business side as well.
It would have cost me a lot more and been much worse if I was completely clueless. Sometimes I'd have ideas that would save development time and money or I'd just hack something together with no-code to save on development.
With 600+ users are you not generating enough to pay for tech support?
It's development, not tech support. Adding new features cost thousands of dollars. You can't support ongoing development without generating at least $3-5000 per month.
Ok, tech development. Same question. You have 600+ users. That must provide some kind of budget for development, no? And why mention new features? You just need your core ones to be crushing it. I realise this may come across as negative but its not meant to. You're bootstrapping a tech product without tech knowledge nor funding which must surely be the steepest side of the mountain. Why can you not secure your core features for the revenue you have. But anyway, why not drop the free users. What do they bring you? How many do you have?
Most users are free, but I wouldn't remove the free tier because it makes too much sense as an entrance to the paid tiers. They simply need to get more than the MVP, which they will in about a week or so.
My budget was enough to get the project off the ground, completely validate it, get feedback and build the infrastructure. I would've liked more, but it's still a very good first step.
Now, my new co-founder can quickly develop it further.