
Ask HN: I’m a non-tech founder, would you recommend me working with freelancers? - danidan
I’m thinking of hiring freelancers to build my MVP. Is that a good idea? Any advice would be much appreciated
======
yixiang
It could be, if you do it right. As a former freelancer and now consultancy
owner, I suggest you to:

1\. Avoid cheap freelancers.

2\. Always start with small tasks to test a freelancer. Assume a freelancer is
unreliable until proven otherwise by his actions.

3\. Make a wireframe yourself, then hire a designer to design it, then hire a
developer to develop it. To save money, you can skip the designer, but the end
result will be ugly. You need to decide what you want to build and specify how
it will look like BEFORE hiring someone to build it.

4\. If you don't want to or don't know how to make a wireframe, consider
hiring a good consultancy to do it with you. They're more likely to have this
skill than freelancers.

I believe essentially you need help building your MVP, and your options
(freelancing, full-time employee, co-founder, or consultancy) are just
different ways of getting that help, they don't matter as much as finding
someone you can trust, and managing expectations, especially your
expectations.

~~~
muzani
In my experience, the expensive freelancers can be even worse than the cheap
ones. They often take a well padded amount so they could outsource it to
someone cheap.

~~~
gammateam
Here is an anecdote that maybe others can relate to:

We hired an expensive design firm that had done the work and designs of other
companies in our sector. Those companies had decent UI and a good amount of
users.

The company spends a lot of time doing something like a vision quest to
accomplish branding, and UI designs take a long time.

The UI was nice to see come together, but it was clear their designer had no
experience with this kind of product and target audience.

The branding and logos and typefaces are top notch. It is all congruent with a
story and has good rationale behind it.

Now, the external development firm we work with also has designers in it. The
work we do with them is billed at $60/hr when that designer is involved, so
the designer is probably getting $40. In the scale of cheap vs expensive when
it comes to designers, this is not considered cheap, but it is much less than
the prior "enterprise design firm". Cheap would be the $5 talent in Pakistan
on Fiverr. This designer is able to crank out UI designs in a day, we can
review them and modify them midflight using collaborative tools, and I am much
more satisfied.

This isn't my first experience with this, but my thoughts are that design is
hit or miss. It just comes down to creative vision, experience, or the series
of templates the designer has. Doing a contest or getting proposals will get
you a better distribution of possibilities, and the designer's process and
pipeline is more important. The $5 Pakistani can also be good. You just need
an efficient way to get design samples.

~~~
dhimes
Here's another anecdote about using freelancers for this: When I wanted a logo
for studyswami.com, I went to fiverr (or something similar) and asked several
different designers for a logo. With all of these logos in hand, I brought
them to a group of people who shared what they liked and didn't like about
each one.

After a bit I had a decent idea, and hired an expensive designer and gave her
a clear idea of what I wanted. She then did a brilliant job, producing three
or four outstanding logos. I think the logo I chose is one of the best out
there anywhere.

The problem with the expensive designers is that they are hampered by the
limitations of creative brainstorming as much as anybody, yet is a big part of
your cost. They usually give you a limited number of designs- like 3 or 4- to
choose from, and you're 'stuck' in that circle of thinking.

So if you can clarify what you want for cheap you'll better use the talent of
the experts, IMHO.

~~~
Kagerjay
I'm not sure studyswami is that great of a logo though.

First, it has too much detail going on. Should just reduce the number of green
pages to one on each side, and increase the overall sizing. You should be able
to make out all the details of a logo, 50px50px, from a distance of 24" from
the monitor.

Second, all good logos work in a square-based format. Study Swami is closer to
a rectangle. Perhaps trimming the overall size left/right would be better, the
overall theme of it is good

Third, I think the center black line on the person is distracting. It doesn't
really add value in my opinion, and both blue lines should be joined

Fourth, the color schema does evoke trust (blue and green), but I think a
color gradient schema from top to bottom might work slightly better (perhaps
teal, book pages uptop are lighter shade, book pages bottom are darker). Use
of some shadows might elicit better effects

Fifth, I think the person should be a completely seperate color than the book,
but that's just my opinion

Sixth, the curvature on the person could use some slight improvements with
golden ratios. I think the person's arms should be going up not down, but
again personal opinion

Seventh, I think the site overall, the text ligature and font-family should be
something simpler like calibiri or Arial

\------------------------------------------------------------------

As a side note you do make good points though. Personally, I am not a great
logo designer I just use 99designs.com, and modify the end result in .AI if I
need too.

You can usually find great logos and portfolio templates from designers, but
you need a strong creative vision and design aesthetic regardless

~~~
dhimes
Just an aside, not really to your overall point: The dark line down the middle
of the person is simply the background showing through.

And I appreciate your comments on the site fonts. Those are entirely my fault.

------
heroic
As a former freelancer myself: here's what i hate about clients:

1\. Know what you need. Don't go to a freelancer assuming he understands, or
cares, about your product as much as you do. 2\. Be clear on every single
functionality about what you need. If there's something you did not define,
the freelancer will mostly always choose the easiest to implement and probably
most unwanted option 3\. Have a wireframe. Always use a wireframing tool to
make a "flow" of how your app will work. If you can't use mock up tools, use
powerpoint, but please have something ready 4\. There is nothing like a cheap,
or expensive freelancer. It's mostly all experience and knowledge. What you
want is someone who can make what you need, and has done similar work before.
A good question to test out someone's basic tech knowledge is to ask them if
they know the difference between, hashing, encoding and encryption.

~~~
adetrest
Totally disagree with you. What you're describing is a code monkey, in which
case it's a commodity and a race to the bottom.

A "freelancer" that charges top rates will give you all that you say the
client should have come up with: they'll sit down with the client, understand
where they're coming from and why they're building what they're building, and
come up with a complete solution, not just code.

As a freelancer you'll also land much better clients with that approach.

------
ncphillips
My opinion is that if you're going to build a technical company you need a
technical co-founder.

Would you start a construction company without a technical co-founder, and
just hire freelance carpenters to build the first few houses?

~~~
syedkarim
I recently had a house built, which exposed me to a dozen general contractors
(people/companies referred to as builders). Not a single one of these small
shops had a carpenter on staff. They were all basically project managers that
subcontract all labor and earn their fee by adding 20% to however much is
spent.

~~~
brentonator
I wouldn't call GC's non-technical. They know all of the pieces that it takes
to get the thing built and the community of construction workers have multiple
general skill-sets. The best part about your GC might be that he knows how to
hire the right people.

------
muzani
The worst part about being non-technical is that you can't really tell who is
good and who isn't.

I'd recommend getting a technical founder on board, at a very generous share.
The product will also need to be pivoted and iterated on a lot. With a
freelancer, they might disappear with a halfway done job.

~~~
bespoken
And how would you assess the skills of a technical founder when you're not
technical yourself? IMAO luck is the factor here.

> they might disappear with a halfway done job

So? At least that is possible with a freelancer, not with technical founder
who has a generous share but fails to render good results.

~~~
muzani
Ideally register the company when there's something to show. Even if the
company has been registered, this is where vesting kicks in. Agreed that it's
probably harder to fire one, and worst case, you might have to abandon the
company and start a new one.

I know that most people won't build things for "equity" but it is a form of
investment for the technical co-founder. That said, a lot do take salary as
well as equity, and it's a balance between which they prefer.

There are some benefits - like being easier to gain investor confidence, if
you do have a technical founder. I think that makes it worth it.

------
vendiddy
I help run a company (turtle.ai) that intros startups to vetted freelance
devs.

We have a several non-technical customers that went from nothing to an MVP
with paying customers. Here are some suggestions for building an MVP with a
freelancer:

\- Make sure you've got designs first. It's 10x cheaper to iterate on designs
than code.

\- Start with a low budget, ideally less than 10-15k. This constraint forces
you to prioritize what is important and launch quickly. Launching quickly is
critical so you prioritize features based on real feedback. By delaying
launch, you risk sinking money into features nobody cares about.

\- Work in weekly iterations. Jump on a call with the freelancer each week to
check on progress and set priorities for the upcoming week. Keep a close eye
on the budget to make sure costs aren't getting out of control.

\- Get someone you trust to review the code early on to make sure the
freelancer is doing a good job. If the code is an unmaintainable mess, it will
be hard to add other developers to your team as you grows.

Having a CTO is the ideal but is not always possible at first. Once you have a
product with traction, recruiting a CTO becomes easier. It separates you from
the founders who have nothing more than ideas.

------
jrvarela56
1\. Hire a technical auditor: someone who can set standards before the project
starts and checks that the freelancers are sticking to them. This can be a
more expensive engineer but you pay for less hours.

2\. Split your project into weekly/bi-weekly deliverables that are useful to
your users as standalone features (lookup INVEST in the context of Agile)

3\. Have all code be checked in to your Github account

4\. Have your auditor check each deliverable to make sure it complies with the
standards defined before the project

Writing from a phone so couldn’t add more details. If you have questions I’ll
elaborate here.

------
revel
If you pay consultants or freelancers you're going to get exactly what you ask
for, and you're definitely not going to be getting anything _better_ than
that. Your mvp will likely be a pure standalone piece of software that you can
never build upon and any changes that you want made will get very expensive
very quickly. If you have a technical product and it's doing something more
complicated than shuffling data around it's probably not in your best
interests to outsource your development.

External developers are going to be incentivized to build exactly what you
tell them to build then charge you fees for maintenance and modifications.
Building a quality product is not going to be a focus because that's not the
way they get rewarded. These are, of course, not impossible problems to
overcome, but you have your work cut out for you to mitigate these structural
issues.

In my opinion, product oriented startups needs someone to build it and someone
to sell it. Startups that don't have both bases covered are exceedingly
unlikely to succeed. You're likely to successfully build an MVP, sell it, and
make minor modifications only to hit a wall about 6-12 months after your
initial release. Past that point your product won't be able to keep pace with
your sales. This is manageable but without someone technical to drive that
transition you'll probably mess it up.

Best of luck.

------
sparkzilla
Remember the M (Minimum) in MVP. It doesn't have to be great. It just has to
show you, your customers and your investors that you have given some though to
how your product will work in practice.

Developers generally don't want to build an MVP, so they will indulge your
insecurity by adding features you don't need right now, adding time, adding
cost, and sapping your energy. It's hard as a non-technical founder to fight
back against this. You don't know what you don't know.

Instead, I always advise non-technical founders to build their MVP by
themselves using a WordPress template. There are literally thousands of
templates, many of which are clones of existing applications For example,
here's an Uber clone [1].

Using WordPress will allow you to 1) take control of the MVP process 2) create
a look and feel for your site 3) test out various plugins to improve
functionality 4) if the plugins don't do what you want you can then hire a
WordPress developer to make the missing functionality, which will be a much
lower cost than getting them to build the whole thing.

And it's scalable. I built [https://newslines.org](https://newslines.org) with
WordPress, which was able to handle over one million page views _in one day_.
Total customisation developer cost: less than $10,000 (and that was for a ton
of work).

[1][https://buildify.cc/taxi-uber-lyft-driver-wordpress-
themes/](https://buildify.cc/taxi-uber-lyft-driver-wordpress-themes/)

~~~
acct1771
Any other interesting ones like this people are aware of?

------
hkai
No, unless you have experience managing them. You may end up wasting money and
time and getting nothing. I heard cases when people do not even get the source
code.

------
csbartus
I'm a freelancer been working on both projects which succeed or failed. The
outcome depends more on the founder however a freelancer can easily be blamed.

My few cents are:

1\. Hire a freelancer if you have not enough budget to hire a studio / agency
which is 2-3 times more expensive.

2\. Hire a good freelancer. How much a website or app costs is not a secret.
Hire a freelancer which goes by that budget and time.

3\. Make sure the freelancer has done similar projects like yours.

4\. Call the freelancer, have a chat, make sure you like each other.

5\. Start with a one week task. If you like the outcome go for the next week.
And so on. Reduce risk by divide et impera.

6\. Make sure the deliverables follow standards / best practices. In other
words: avoid vendor locking. If the project has to be picked up by someone
else make it sure it is possible.

7\. Make the freelancer you first employee / co-founder. Many freelancers
would go by this scheme.

------
RomanPushkin
Yes and no. Remember, good programmers always work with good entrepreneurs. If
you have money, you'll find a programmer. If you don't have any funding, why
programmer should bother working with you? Show who you are by raising some
funds for MVP. Most programmers will be happy if you raised only $10K for
their MVP, because often they work on their own MVPs without any funding (and
not interested in other folks who can't provide any resources like cash,
engineering time, etc).

If you "but I need MVP first so I'll be able to talk to investors", drop me a
line roman.pushkin@gmail.com, I have MVP.

~~~
scarface74
In the US, after just taking into account Federal (24% more than likely) and
FICA (15.3% including the employers side). $10K is only around $6000 after
taxes and that doesn’t include state taxes. How many good developers would be
willing to put work in for that amount?

If I’m already making enough where I am already over the SS maximum and I
wouldn’t pay the 12.4% on SS, the extra money is probably not worth my time.

~~~
RomanPushkin
Well, for me (I am developer) it's important that my co-founder can raise
money, can sell the product on the early stage. If it's possible, it gives
motivation to code the product. So it's not about the money, but about
motivation. I will have some sort of guarantee/confidence that when product is
finished, at least we'll make few sales.

~~~
scarface74
He wasn’t offering to make the developer a cofounder or give them equity. He
was just trying to hire someone.

Sure if a new company was trying to get off the ground and they needed
investors, I would be much more willing to invest my time for an equity stake
than I would be to invest the equivalent amount of money to hire a good
developer.

But, a net of $6000 with no upside is not exciting to me I don’t even own the
code so I could throw it out in a private [1] repo that I could use as part of
my portfolio to show at an interview.

[1] I wouldn’t just put it out in the open but I would want it to be something
I could optionally give read access to show off my work.

------
codingdave
You are going to get a system based on the architectural opinions of someone
else. There is no way around that. Even in the comments already posted here,
the advice is sprinkled with opinions that may or may not be correct for you.

So it all comes down to working with someone you can trust. Whether that is an
individual freelancer, someone you hire to run the freelancers, or outsourcing
it all to a firm... you need to put your trust in them. If you have a good way
to vet whomever that is, sure, it can work. But if you don't even have enough
tech knowledge to do that vetting, I would recommend against using
freelancers.

------
soneca
I don't think it is. Hire a good software developer that match these criteria:

\- is not a freelancer

\- but is willing to do it in their free time

\- genuine believes your idea is worth pursuing

\- is interested in learning more about the tech that they will use for the
MVP

Make this proposal: freelance paid by the hour as trial to become CTO/co-
founder.

Pay the average market rate (more than the cheapest from Upwork, less than the
experienced ones that freelance to big companies).

This way you attract someone interested in your success, that will create
software of good quality and still will get a good deal even if your startup
fails ( some money and learning).

I did this and was able to find very good developers. The startup failed on
the business side, but it was a fair trade.

Ultimametly though I learned to code and I am bootstrapping a web app that I
build on my own. I recommend this above all. But I understand it is not for
everyone.

The problem with professional freelancers is that they can not be interested
in your startup's success. You need a developer thinking about the product,
not just the code. Or you can get a "tricky genius" kind of dev. That realizes
your wishes exactly according to your specifications, but still manage to not
create what you want. They just take the shortest path to their payment. I got
burned a whole $20,000 once like this.

------
axelrosen
I tried many times, I thought my odds were better being a technical founder,
yet it didn't ever quite work out. It's not just about the abilities or
whatnot. The relationship between you and a contractor is just so different
than that with a co-founder or a dedicated employee. Will you feel comfortable
bothering them with seemingly unimportant details? Will they keep thinking how
to do things better?

I generally try to be a nice person and never wanted to be THAT terrible
person who tries to get a lot done for no $. But then you still feel like
you're wasting your money and feeling scammed is not a great feeling. You have
to pick between being a douchebag and a foolish people-pleaser.

I think contractors are great for large organizations that need to quickly
scale up (and down) their tech force without hiring. Money isn't a problem for
them and relations with employees in a large organization are transnational
already so it's not going to be that much worse.

If you're trying to save money, then no don't do it. The best way to save
money is to convince somebody to just do it for you.

------
KohgnaK
My 2 cents:

1/ On your side, you need to make sure you know what you want (at the very
least the big picture)with a rough idea on priorities and communicate it to
your contractors well. Reserve some time for questions on their side and be
generally open. In return, listen to their technical feedback and take it on
account when weighting on decisions. After all, you hired them because they
have some level of technical expertise that you don't have.

2/ On their side, your contractors must be comfortable with showing their
progress on a regular basis. This is tremendously important so you can see how
things are moving, catch problems before they arise and overall steer the
whole ship if need be. It is also really important that they are able to
explain what they are doing and why do they do it in this order as after all
they are working for you.

Finding this balance will essentially make sure the contractors have what they
need to fill your expectations while making sure on your side you actually
have what you are paying for.

------
mrhappyunhappy
I’m in your shoes now. I’m a UX designer trying to launch my app. The dev I
hired is okay but he is not top notch. He frequently misses things that I have
to catch. It is tiring but I put up with it because the alternative is much
more expensive. My advice would be to triple your budget from whatever you
have in mind. Developers are not robots, they can’t estimate down to the
dollar like a designer could (not that you’d want that). In all of my
experience of working with devs, projects tend to run well over timeline and
well over budget. So if you have say a 5k budget for your app, best assume
it’ll cost 15k and take 3 times longer to complete.

Another note: as a designer I have found developers to severely lack attention
to detail. I get it. I’ve done dev work myself and know what it’s like to look
at code and the difficulty of switching your mind to making sure every is per
spec. I have worked around top notch developers and have yet to come across
one with the attention to detail to never miss anything. You better be on your
feet all the time and double and triple checking yourself. The product will
likely never be delivered in the form you hope for.

Last thing: spell the shit out of every task. Organize in pivotal or what have
you. Having an idea of how something should look or function will not always
carry over to the person you describe it to. It’ll be clear as day in your
mind and they will only have a slight clue as to what you imagine. Spell it
out to the letter - function by function, detail by detail, item by item. I
know this sounds harsh but if you don’t do this you’ll lose a lot of money
fast without a finished product. The only devs who are reading this now and
thinking this is fken ridiculous are the devs who are much more experienced
and are likely at the top of their game - not a freelancer type you can ever
afford for an MVP. I dream of working with a dev like that but like I said I
have yet to come across one. Maybe they all work at google amazon Facebook,
who knows?

So, expect delays, expect going well over your budget and be prepared to hand
hold throughout the whole project.

------
barry-cotter
You have given little information so probably you don’t have anything
valuable, on average. If you have real customers, a number of people who have
committed to pay for something well defined via a letter of intent or real
expertise in some business then by all means go for it.

If you work with freelancers it could work out if you’re good, lucky or both.
Don’t do that. Find someone who doubles your chandlcebif success and work with
them instead.

You could A. Get a job B. Work on upwork or some other Market for Lemons C. Do
Lambdaschool.com D. Do open.appacadenmmy.io E. Sell a technical cofounder on
you

E means showing how great you are, how much you know about your target market
or how big it is or how many potential customers you have for a _detailed,
particular_ idea.

------
dpeck
There are “studios” that have been setup inside a few accelerators that would
be the only way I’d do this. They aren’t cheap, but they’re generally people
with some startup experience who know how to crank out code and not give you
as many headaches along the way.

I would not use a random contractor, and would only use the above as a last
resort. It’s cliched, but if you can’t convince a technical person or two to
join your team early and go in with you on it, it’s going to be tough to
convince others too. Think of getting a few people who know how to build
things as your first investors (even if you’re paying them... you should be
paying them unless you are splitting equity like founders).

------
ThomPete
If you understand tech well enough that you can spar with them then yes.

I have built several products with freelancers. My primary area is design but
I understand technology well enough that I can help solve potential problems I
can even code a little (mostly php, javascript and scripting like css and
html) I can also look at lover level languages like objective c code and
understand kind of what is going on.

If you are building something technically complex I would say you are much
better of finding at tech-co-founder or at least have some friends in the tech
business you get advice from.

If you are building simpler things then you should be fine with just running
it yourself.

------
kyriakos
There is no clear answer. It depends.

First of all consider a Freelancer as a mercenary. He doesn't care about your
cause, he cares about getting paid for it. That means most of the times he
will cut corners which may not be obvious at first but will come up later
(e.g. security, scalability etc). This can usually be avoided by not going for
the cheapest options but again there are no guarantees.

On the other hand you may find a capable freelancer who has a good
professional ethic. Who may even end up being one of your first employees
later.

------
HelloNurse
If you are going to start a software company, you need a good software
development team, and a team that consists only of a nontechnical entrepreneur
and freelancers has an obvious leadership disadvantage compared to a team in
which top management has a good grasp of what they are doing.

Are you sure that your business/product idea is sufficiently aligned with your
skills and knowledge? If not, why do you expect to be able to compete with
experts?

------
rehemiau
First you need to find a technical co-founder you can trust. I saw a few
founders fail because they thought they can manage communication with
developers alone.

------
pplonski86
It can be hard. I would recommend you to search for freelancer that would like
to be engaged into your project. While working on startup you need to put
heart in what you are doing, often working much more than needed. You will
have a problem with freelancer that is doing only his tasks and nothing more.

------
kgiddens1
It is possible to build an MVP in this way - my suggestion is to take a small
project with clearly defined deliverables and shop it to 3-5 minimum
developers as a super alpha of whatever it is you are building.

In this way you are able to test the quality of the outsourcing company you
are using / freelancer.

Also, as a note to anything - if it is not working out - fire quickly.

Good luck!

------
ideatostartup
We ([https://ideatostartup.org](https://ideatostartup.org)) have helped
several non-tech founders build their MVP and can help you too.

------
DrNuke
Best path here is getting cheap prototypes you like from the bottom market
(fiverr or similar) and make them mod / improve by a local, skilled freelancer
you trust and know in person.

------
scarface74
There are companies that you can outsource the entire development to. They
will do the project management, find the developers with right skillset, etc.

------
JBerlinsky
I'm a consultancy owner where our engagement mode slightly resembles a
freelancer model. There are a few things you should keep in mind (some of
which have already been mentioned in this thread):

1\. Don't participate in the race to the bottom on price. The goal with most
MVPs, in my experience, is to build something that can feasibly be expanded
beyond the MVP point. If you work with someone inexpensive, you're likely to
wind up with something that, even if it meets your goals, will be difficult to
expand upon beyond the initial scope. Of note, you should bear in mind your
growth plan beyond the MVP. For example, do you want this freelancer to stick
around long enough to help install an internal team? If so, you almost
certainly want someone with management/hiring experience, not necessarily a
recent code bootcamp grad.

2\. Don't work with someone on a fixed-fee if your business has any
possibility of adjustment. There are plenty of shops and freelancers out there
who grossly misunderstand what it means to be "agile." Agile software
development isn't just about the tools and processes one uses to build
software -- it's about alignment with the business at any given point in time,
and an engineering team's ability to adjust as your business realities change.
For example, as you're building your MVP, if you discover that feature X is
critical to a large customer using your product, you're logically going to
want to introduce it to your MVP scope and prioritize it accordingly. Working
with someone on a fixed fee incentivizes scope-freezes when the work is
started, which might have financial advantage for you in the short term, but
can greatly hinder your ability to adjust as the world changes around you and
your business.

3\. Work with people who are aligned with your business. Someone who isn't
willing to understand the actual business machinations at play behind your MVP
is not going to be understanding of your priorities, and won't be able to make
informed technical recommendations. You might not think you're looking for a
CTO-like figure or anything of that ilk, but when first building out a MVP
that you hope to grow beyond that, this level of insight is extremely
valuable.

3a. When working with consultancies in particular, do not try to offset
monetary payment with stock/equity. It's a clear red flag for us.

4\. Work with people you can trust. If you don't have someone in your network,
go out of your way to build that trust.

5\. Have an idea of what you want, but be willing to listen. Some of us have
done user research a million times and know what people don't want to see in a
product, and the good ones are going to bring such things to your attention.
You know your business better than outside people/organizations, but they
might know something you don't.

I'm happy to have a conversation about this with anyone interested. Email in
profile.

------
andrew_wc_brown
I've built 40+ web-apps in the last decade through freelancing and then had my
own web-firm with a team of 8 developers all remote. I got tired of building
MVPs and so switched to AWS Training and Consultancy since my passion is with
educational training.

What kills projects and drives up costs was:

Client doesn't have a clear vision of what will sell. This is evident since
they have multiple business models or they keep changing features to tweak the
business model. Have one business model and be confident that you won't change
anything. If you have to change then you didn't do market validation and you
are wasting money on development.

Client's don't understand the scope of what goes into a app and when you ask
them to block out the pages they need come back with only 30% and then an
estimate is made based on whats presented. They never think about the admin
panel, the auxiliary pages, support pipeline, on-boarding flow. If you can
find an "Interaction Designer" who can not only wireframe but design end to
end flows this will migrate developer waste.

Bringing in a technical advisor, developer, designer mid project always
inflates budget because they provide conflicting advice, try to over architect
over process, or now we have two sources of truth, the advisor and the client.
If you want to bring in more resources you need to understand you'll be
expected to adjust the budget and pay more since you made more work for
freelancer/firm than previous.

Flipping the coin I have been brought into projects as a technical advisor,
and I have found developers totally lieing about their work by logging fake
hours or outsourcing when they are not allowed to. I helped the client gain
visibility by showing them how to read git commit history, what a sprint
should look like. Re-estimate out tickets and gauge an alternative velocity to
help the understand if the speed of the developer matches their cost. What a
good/bad commit looks like. But I don't tell the developer what to do, create
tasks or make in detail architectural decisions.

AWS, Rails and NodeJS are good as your primary stack since bootcamps churn
juniors as low as 2.5K CAD on Rails and NodeJS. AWS is good since it gives you
full visibility and helps you enforce good practices so you have less
technical debt down the road.

I've hired developers out of bootcamps, hired them off of upwork, randomly
cold-emailed developers I liked. I get them from everywhere. Its a 1:40 ratio
to find a developer with good work ethic.

I care about work ethic and best practices/good habits first and developer
experience second.

I would suggest getting lo-fi sketches of every possible page in desktop for
your admin, marketing, support, onboard, auxiliary and core pages.

Then you get a developer to code them

Then after the functionality is in place you bring in a UX designer to polish
the designs.

If you have the money I would get a Interaction Design on day 1.

------
DoreenMichele
I'm not a programmer. I have a certificate in GIS. I've blogged for years and
I know a little HTML and CSS.

Here is a comment about prototyping without writing any code:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18400363](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18400363)

I was advised to start a _design doc_ on my own. It's kind of an idea file to
flesh out what you are trying to do.

I am personally leery of hiring a freelancer to code something up for things I
want to accomplish, but maybe I will change my mind someday. That's just where
I am mentally currently. It's not intended to suggest that where I am
currently is some Final Word.

Here is some of why I am leery:

1\. In GIS school, I learned that a proper Geographic information system was
integrated into the workflow of an organization and maps were generated by
people needing them, people who have a purpose for the map. The information
they want to convey with the map matters and serves a goal. In an organization
where GIS is some department where other people send requests for maps, you
get a "map shop." Map shops wind up being places that produce pretty maps.

A good nap will be described as beautiful by many people. Good design is
functional and has aesthetic appeal in the vein of something well engineered.
But a pretty map isn't necessarily a good map. In fact, prettifying a map
because making the map is all you do typically makes it less useful.

So what I learned is that good maps are made by people who are creating the
map for a purpose, not people who get paid to crank out maps. The person with
that purpose is the best person to make that map.

2\. When you hire it out, you miss out on founder development. Good companies
are made, not born. "Self made men" go through a substantial process to get
there.

The single most important element in a business is _paying customers_. If you
don't have that, you don't have a real business. You maybe have an expensive
hobby.

Doing things yourself has a lot to do with interacting with the target market
and thereby learning what you need to do differently. Hiring someone to code
it up may have it's place, but it may also deny you those valuable
interactions with your intended customers while you focus on having code
rather than focusing on having a thing that accomplishes a particular
objective. Code may end up being that thing that accomplishes that objective.
But it may not be.

You might try collecting stories of things that were founded without initially
having code. Craig's List started as an email list.

Having said all that, I will suggest that if you do hire someone, you do your
homework as outlined by others in comments here. Make sure you know what you
want them to do for you. Don't just throw an idea at them and expect them to
make magic.

I do freelance writing. I vastly prefer to get short, concise instructions
that give me a clear set of parameters for the piece. I hate getting multiple
pages micromanaging details.

So spell out the big picture stuff. Avoid micromanaging, if possible.

Last, good communication is a big part of successful freelance work. Try to
find someone you click with. They can't give you what you need if they don't
really understand what you have in mind.

Edit: See also this current post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18480115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18480115)

------
kapauldo
I would invest a few days or weeks and write a detailed and precision spec.
Then you can work with freelancers. The biggest risk is scope creep because it
sours relationships quickly. If you invest the time to write a spec, there is
far less risk. A spec is a narrative and a list of specific screens and
functions. I have run a dev shop for 10 years and can help you with a spec if
you're interested.

------
k0t0n0
in my previous team, our founder was not technical. she hired an experienced
freelancer (they had a history of projects together) then that freelancer
managed her team/ hire process.

take away from this

1\. hire a developer you can trust.

2\. he can build a team

3\. don't use Node for backed (my personal opinion)

4\. keep an eye on how much everyone is getting paid.

if you need help hit me up at akshay.deep0{at}gmail.com

I have been freelancing from 7years now.

