Do's and don'ts of having someone build your next big app idea.
Published: 2020-07-18 22:42:19

You have an idea...great. You want to execute that idea....even better. Lets get you set up with some things to think about when having someone build your next idea.

I want to be very clear, this is NOT to discourage you, this is a blog post to be supportive of your dreams an aspirations to be an entrepreneur by providing you with some things to think about, as a technical person myself. I will not go into extreme detail on every topic I cover, if you'd like me to expand on anything please contact me and I will be happy to.

### **Know what you want**

Software is complicated and a hard thing to get right. Having an idea is great. The next step to that is taking steps to identify your MVP (minimum viable product). From wire framing to your market research.

> Do your research!

Make sure there is a market fit before giving someone all of your money you've saved up from grandma and the holidays. There is an easy way to do this. Throw up a webpage with a sign up form for people to sign up for your service. See if there's interest in it. That's not to say if there isn't immediate interest you should give up and you don't have a good idea. But maybe, just maybe you need to rethink the thing you're offering and adjust. Or its a marketing thing, or its a design thing, or NO ONE HAS SEEN THE WEBSITE. I DON'T FUCKING KNOW! ITERATE, PEOPLE!

Building and marketing sign up pages for your service (especially if you already have a following) is a great and cheap way to test out different ideas without breaking the bank.

Later on, ***I personally** think you can focus on design, marketing, UX once you've proven your concept and have people showing interest. If you have the money and time, by all means having a great design, user experience, and marketing campaign is just as if not more important than you're product. I'm inherently biased (like everyone) and Im trying to lay out how I would think about hiring a third party to build my baby.

### **Do I need a mobile app or a web app?**

I don't think people think about this enough. People think they want an app and they will build it, put it on the app store and then people will just start downloading it. 

> Take a breath!

Unfortunately, it's much more complicated than that. Ask yourself this question.

> Whats my use case? What problem am I here to solve?

Do I need constant access to a users camera? Do I not really need any native functionality on my users device? Think about Instagram and Snapchat, they need constant access to your camera. As we all know, the iOS and Android versions of these apps make WAY more sense than the browser versions.

Does a website make more sense? What am I doing? How will people use this? Will people use this on their phone? Will they use this on their home computer?

You get the point, these are important questions to ask yourself and think through. It's not just esoteric minutia, I promise.

Great, you've decided, we don't really need a mobile app, we can get away with a website. We know our use case.

> Now what? 

### **Finding someone to do the work**

I'm assuming if you're reading this you're non technical or you are technical and want to outsource the work. Or maybe, I've politely asked you to read my blog post to get more views :)

INTERVIEW YOUR PROSPECTS

Please don't just say yes to the first person that agrees to build your idea. This is a long term relationship, spend time getting to know them and ask around for people to vet their work.

### **Mitigating long term risk**

These people, they're wizards, they are taking your idea and your money, then making it a reality. And they have the keys to your castle. 

> What's this castle Scott?

Your users information, your source code, your business logic, your database passwords, your deployment configurations. EVERYTHING

There must be trust and long term accountability which is why vetting people is so important. In addition, things WILL GO WRONG. I promise. Make sure there is some sort of accountability long term.

Maybe you pay them a retainer, maybe they have equity in the company. **Be very clear about what you will need and whats covered in this cost**. 

If your app goes down and whatever caused the issue is not in your retainer, you're not in a good negotiating position.

### **Protect your intellectual property**

It's 2020, I love NDA's as much as the next person. But if you're asking someone to take control of your baby, you should probably make them sign something that say's they're working on the product but don't own it. And under certain circumstances they must give you access to **the castle**. You need EVERYTHING back in case things go south. Please have an insurance policy in place.

### **Know the laws of your domain**

Holy shit! Please know the laws of the countries you operate in and make sure the people building your app do as well. Go do some research on GDPR. DO YOUR RESEARCH. 

### **Make sure you're responsible with your user's information**

> Here's another holy shit moment.

Please make sure security is important to you and the person thats building this thing. A lot of companies that "bootstrap" think they can do this later. Guess what? They don't. Be responsible, these people are giving you their personal information, and will one day pay your bills or make you rich. Make sure the person/company you pick to build this thing keeps that in mind. Industry standards are standards for a reason.

### **Your party favor**

This is by no means an exhaustive list, hopefully it'll get you started and thinking about this a little bit differently so you know what questions to ask or to not ask. You're someone with an idea that wants to make it a reality. I fucking salute you. Keep charging forth.

If you want me to go over any topics in depth please don't hesitate to reach out.

As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing from you.

Scott