The Non-Technical Founder’s Danger of Using a Freelancing Site

These are amazing times in terms of going from idea to finished product. But even though you can get cheap hosting, software or services, you need to avoid the pitfall of hiring low cost developers without really knowing how good they are.

I still remember the time in the early 2000’s when I had an online platform idea that I wanted to build and make available online. Back then you couldn’t just “rent” a server. As hard as it sounds today, you had to actually buy at least a web application server and a database server (usually costing tens of thousands of dollars) and then rent actual physical space, usually a rack, in a co-location internet hosting company that would also cost at least a few hundred dollars a month with yearly contracts. It would end up costing about $35,000 back then just to put the website up.

But that’s no longer the case. Now you can get a server up and running in a few minutes with your credit card and pay $20 a month, or, if you don’t mind not having a custom domain name, even for free in a Platform-as-a-service company like Heroku or Glitch.

But unfortunately the commoditization of human resources has been pushed by a few companies that “sell” professionals for five bucks per project or ten per hour. It’s almost like some entrepreneurs figured out that if you can sell the servers cheap, you should be able to get the workers for cheap as well.

According to this article in The Atlantic, more than 48 million people have registered globally on websites allowing them to sell their labor and countries like Malaysia and Nigeria are actively training their residents on how to use online labor platforms.

It would be foolish of me to say that all the freelancers on these platforms are not good professionals. There is a bit of everything, and I’ve had the chance to find and work with really good ones from across the globe. But the advantage I have over a non-technical founder is that I know what good code and architecture looks like.

Look, I get it. You only have $20 thousand dollars from your friends and family, and you can’t possibly hire a $120 an hour top developer here in the United States. You would run out of money before you even have anything to show people.

I also have heard founders tell me they pay close attention to the ratings the developers they choose have. But one thing you have to account for is the following: the people giving those ratings might be non-technical founders like you who just rated this developer based on how prompt, professional and courteous he was with you, but they might be paying for spaghetti code that might be an amazingly bad foundation for other developers to build on top of.

Your project’s architectural design, code layout and data models are like the foundations of a building. Would you trust anyone to build this for you if this was a real building?

The solution is easy: find a technical partner that really knows what good code and architecture looks like. This partner doesn’t have to work full time with you, but can help you search for the right developer, draft the initial product spec for the freelance developer to follow and participate in daily stand-ups with the developers to make sure the work being produced is up to a high standard. It’s almost like application insurance: you really need it if you want to do anything with that codebase.

If you don’t know this partner personally, try to find one on LinkedIn that has the relevant experience that you want in your product and go for people with many years of experience. Also try to make a deal where you pay a monthly fee instead of an hourly contract. That way you don’t worry about variable monthly budgets.

Even though MVPs are supposed to be a very brief version of your product, it shouldn’t be throw-away code. You should be able to produce a good foundation to show investors and test customers on and once people realize how good your platform is, have the confidence that once you land more investment, you can get that initial version of the platform to the next level with full confidence.

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If you are looking for a technical partner for your startup, reach out to me. I am the founder of MVP Lean, a consulting firm to help startups navigate the choppy waters to success. We do monthly-fixed contracts and become your in-house CTO. We also develop awesome mobile and web platforms.