Choosing a Development Company (some advice after implementing tailor-made startups)

Published in

The Startup

8 min readSep 17, 2018

Most of our clients are looking for a developer for their first or second project. Over a couple of calls, we both try to see if we are a good fit. Even if we are not, I try to help a bit and give some advice. Sometimes, months after, they contact me again if my advice has been useful. Just recently I realized that the advice I give tends to be almost the same every time. That’s why I decided to write this article.

As a founder, when you have an idea and the resources to implement
it, you don’t want to lose momentum. It’s useful to have a mature
development agency which you can trust to be just one message (or call)
away. How do you find an agency like that?
It’s simple: make a list of potential agencies, conduct your research to find the best, then contact the best of the best. But how do you know who is the best? Here is what you should assess:

Product Expertise

What is your product’s niche?

Is it a new real estate loan marketplace?
Or a productivity app for business?
Instagram for dogs?

Look for agencies who have already done similar projects. Why
choose a developer who needs to experiment and start from scratch if
there are people who have done the same (or similar) tasks before? An
experienced development agency will ask the right questions and help to
reduce total costs.

Communication

Bad communications is #1 reason for project failure

If you see completion of your project is failing or falling well
behind schedule, and you have at least 2 months until the completion
deadline, you can still save it. But if you have only realized there are
serious problems a week before the deadline, the project has probably
failed already.

You need to be certain that the development agency on the other
side of the table are on the same page as you. How? Good communications!
For example, schedule weekly demos and daily stand-ups. If you can’t do
this in person, you can use Skype or any other conferencing tool for
regular, scheduled meet-ups. From my experience, it helps to discover problems early and solve them quickly. Ask your potential developer if they follow this practice, or if they have an alternative solution.

Tech expertise

Even when your product is unique and unlike anything that’s gone
before, it is still built from the same bricks and mortar as many other
existing and established products. Take a look at Uber, it consists of
the following “bricks”:

mobile app with account management
GPS tracking
map support
backend with payment integration, fraud protection,
complaint management

A lot of other apps use these same things under the hood, they are
not original or unique. Once you’ve defined the bricks needed for your
own project, you can ask each potential developer about their expertise
and previous experience with your “bricks”. You can also learn how much
time it should take for the development of each part. It could also help
the development agency to allot significantly less development time for
the parts they already know.

Marketing expertise

Startup founders may already have substantial experience with
marketing, especially if they’ve been down this road before. First time
founders usually lack this experience and must consider the following,
for example:

Do you have an exact portrait or persona of your end users?
Do you know how you will get your first users?
How do you plan to track conversions from clicks to payers?
Can you calculate ROI based on different acquisition channels?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions (and more), you
may spend a lot of money on development to create a great product, but
still get no users!

Alternatively, you could try and partner with a development agency
which has this marketing expertise and is willing to share it and work
with you. Their assistance could also help with other technical issues,
such as giving advice on what to cut from the feature list to reduce
development costs, testing the product and marketing hypotheses, and
suggesting tactics for acquiring first users.

Consider what expertise you have and where you need help, then
include this help in the expertise you would like from your development
partner.

Type of company

Like in any business, development agencies come in a wide variety
of flavors and styles. Not all developers will suit your business needs,
so consider which type you need:

Enterprise suppliers

These are outsourcing companies who target enterprises. They have more detailed procedures, higher security expertise (eg: fingerprint sensors and cameras) and high-level certifications. Their typical client may be a big bank, insurance company or a large corporation such as Boeing. These developers know how to sell their services and how to code according to detailed technical documents and specifications. But they don’t usually think about product success, other than the absence of
bugs. They are not equipped to help you discover the best product-market
fit & how to sell it! But if you are totally sure that your users will
pay for a precise, written set of features, then this type of
development partner could be great for you.

Startups suppliers

Usually, they call themselves a “studio”, “agency” or “factory”.
These are small to medium size businesses working with early-stage
startups. They have fewer strict rules and processes, they are more
agile, and are usually willing to sign-up to a non-disclosure agreement
to give your project some IP protection. Usually, a standard form of
contract is enough to get started. Depending on their time in business,
they can usually have a number of capability niches with reviewable
works to show. They are usually less expensive and more flexible with
start dates and completion schedules.

In most cases, a startup business will be best served by a
development agency which:

has experience helping startups to go from scratch to product
knows that at the MVP stage it is unnecessary to undertake exhaustive code testing
understands that time-to-market may be critical
is flexible with the development schedule where completion of
certain features may need to be postponed
assists with the ongoing need for user feedback

You need to consider if your project should be the one to provide
an inexperienced development agency with the inner processes and
learning opportunities to attain the above expertise.

Company Size

As an entrepreneur, you will be carrying a lot of risks and you
need to reduce these risks wherever possible. You need to make sure your
development partner will not disappear, eg: after two core staff decide
to change jobs for higher salaries. So a small, five-person company is
probably not what you’re looking for (even if they have the ideal
competence and offer you a great discount). You should ask them if they
have implemented any quality-assurance programs for their business.
Check if they have developers with experience on different platforms
(eg: mobile and website) so that you won’t need to go through this whole
selection process again if you decide to extend your product’s reach.

Pricing policy

Never look for the cheapest company. Consider why your potential
partner charges their quoted price. Ask them. It doesn’t matter how low
their hourly rate is if it will need 5x the hours to complete your project.

If low price is your priority, you may get stuck in the middle of
the project with low-quality code that no-one is willing (or able) to
complete. It is not unknown for a replacement team of professional
developers to refuse to work on existing code of poor quality — you may
need to throw the existing work into the trash and start all over again.

Middle-tier companies do not necessarily save you from less than
optimal coding quality, but at least you have more chance of finding a
replacement team with a similar budget. When considering large and
highly experienced agencies, try to compare two or more similar
companies and look for important differences — other than pricing. Then
judge whether those differences are significant for your project.

What else?

Does the culture & strategy of the developer fit with that of your
own company? Remember, you will be working with these people on a
day-to-day basis so you both need to be happy and comfortable with the
way you work together.

Last things to consider

New programming languages, frameworks and technologies are
continually released. Each one promises to overtake their predecessors
in development speed and efficiency. Yes — you like that! Developers
like it too, and after they “buy” into these new technologies, they need
to “sell” it to their customers — whether they want it or not, whether
they need it or not.

There is a huge variety of good back-end & front-end languages, old
and new. Your product could be built with any of them, within a
reasonable budget and in the available time. On the other hand, your
product could be built with a lot of bugs and errors which may take 5x
the initial budget and a few years to launch. If so, the reason for the
blowout is almost certainly a lack of talent in the development team,
not the programming language or platform quality.

In other words, if somebody says that your idea MUST be implemented
in Ruby for example, but not in PHP, do this: Google “Sites running on
PHP”. Then spend a few minutes reading the responses and come to your
own conclusions. It is almost certain that the quality of the businesses
in the listing and their online presence would give you no reason to
reach the same conclusions as the developer.

Pro tips

Ask experienced friends and colleagues to help you estimate the
technical level of the lead engineer of a company under consideration.
Ask your potential developer for contacts of previous clients,
especially those in a similar niche as your project. Call them and ask
for their experiences with the developer. Did they have any problems?
Can they give you any suggestions about working with them? Is there
anything you should be wary of? Ask what they would like to change in
the way they work with your potential partner?

P.S. If you enjoyed this article and want more like these, please clap and share with friends that may need it.

🚀 My team helps US startup founders to bring their ideas to life over 3 years. If something from this article resonates with your own thought, write me the message in FB or ✉️: oleg@productcrafters.io

Thanks to Russell Farr for text improvements