Ask HN: Nontech solo founder, how to build with freelancer devs
I have been a cofounder in the past in a different industry (Business-to-government, EU), with an experienced CTO, we raised 250K but failed to raise more due the nature of our business so we closed shop.
Now, I have been working on this idea for a few months on validation and on technical feasibility and decided to go for it. Its not very complicated to pull off tech-wise, and I found some open source projects that could be of help, but ultimately I would need a team of people to build it.
I obviously need a CTO and I have asked a few friends and acquaintances but at the moment theyre busy doing their own things, and its too early for them because I dont have much to show for at the moment. They have told me to validate the idea first by signing up potential customers and then come back.
So going forward, I can invest around $50K for an MVP, and the initial launch. I can start talking to customers, but I need a team of freelancers to build the MVP.
My question is, how and where do you find effective and affordable freelancers? How do you go about it without getting burned? Do you go to a dev shop, or make a team of individual ones?
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Something things I've found important.
1) Hire at the cheaper end of the devs your looking at. I've found within price/experience bands, price and quality are not correlated. I prefer to hire at the lower end of expectation, then if a dev shows themself as good, give them an solid pay bump early, like 3/4 months into working together. This way you get a good person, and someone that knows you will look after them as you took the pay rise to them.
2) Fire fast. By nature I like to work things out and help people but if people have troubles early, move them on fast, its most likely going to get worse and you'll beat your head against a a wall trying to fix them and it will take from the project.
3) Document the shit out of what you need + do a dummy visual version. When things get to the pointy end its too easy to get to arguments about what you agree, what you agreed means, or what is 'expected' even if not stated specifically. A dummy version helps sort a bunch of this out - it adds extra but will really help over doing more written notes and key screens only plus helps you plan your product better.
4) Clear payment milestones. Make it fair but you need real deliverables for each payment so you can get what you paid for.
5) Leave at least 30% for extras. No matter how much you plan it out, you'll find extras as you go.
I am a tech founder (even though not officially the CTO as I do more CEO stuff now).
I highly recommend against Freelancers or people who will have no future skin in the game. Instead, you need to try and get some type of Prototype built yourself (may be with some help) and then look for a CTO/Co-founder.
Ok, so what can you do to find a CTO:
- Do Wireframes or mockups of your idea (use something like Whimsical or any other mockup tool. Personally I am a big fan of Whimsical and use it daily to mock ideas)
- Get it designed using something like Figma. May be use a Designer Freelancer for that. That's ok
- Put up a landing page using a website builder. Talk about the idea there. Create a signup list if you can.
- Get busy on social media like twitter/linkedin
Do all of these and you may be able to attract a good CTO. The point is to do enough things first to attract the tech co-founder.
Again, do not pay freelancers to build an application unless you really have no leads even after doing all the steps I mentioned above. You will thank me later.
Email in my profile. I run a small agency with a few web & mobile devs. We are in between the projects right now, and generally specialise in early stage startups.
Most of my team is based in eastern Europe so they are a bit more affordable than US / UK prices, but skilled ones are never cheap.
But to answer your questions:
The only way we found is via personal recommendations. You might be lucky with your first contact with a random, but could as well be unlucky.
Either works, but I think going for a dev shop is a bit better because you know the team already knows how to work together, so there is a lot less initial friction.
Why a team? How about just one.
upwork.com
Ideally you'll have good requirements for what you want. If it's a web product create a wireframe. If you can create a clickable HTML wireframe even better.
If there's an open source equivalent just use that.
Get a co founder, everything else will be problematic. If that is not possible a freelancer that might become a co founder later. Switching in between will be horrible and slow things down to death.
NEVER EVER go with a dev shop. High prices, bad people and the worse they won't care at all and can never become your co founder. Your thing will be doomed from the start.