What do you check before hiring someone to build your MVP?

One mistake I repeatedly see is founders evaluating MVP developers mainly through:

• Price

• Timeline

• Framework experience

• Portfolio screenshots

Those things matter, but they do not reveal how the developer will make product and architecture decisions.

I think these questions are more useful:

1. What would you remove from the MVP?

2. What technical foundations would you refuse to postpone?

3. How would you handle multi-tenant authorization?

4. What happens when a payment or external API fails?

5. Who controls GitHub, hosting and third-party accounts?

6. How often will I receive a working demonstration?

7. What is excluded from the estimate?

8. What support exists after launch?

A developer who challenges unnecessary scope may be more valuable than someone who immediately agrees to build everything.

The same applies to architecture. Early products often need a clean monolith and reliable deployment—not a collection of microservices created before the product has users.

I wrote a longer guide based on these points, but I am interested in the founder perspective:

What question helped you identify a good—or bad—development partner?

Full guide: