I had an idea for a software application and hired a programmer from one of the freelance programming websites. Towards the end he bailed. I even gave him extra money because the project ran over the time he said it would take. I ended up with useless software. He had excellent reviews, and was established on the freelance website
I know what I want the software to do but it seems I almost need to know programming to convey it or a wireframe or something. I had written down what I wanted it to do. But even the basic function ended up broken
Along the way as problems presented themselves i had to brainstorm solutions for the problems. As an example there could be two things named the same thing, this caused the software to crash. I would have thought the programmer would have already thought of this being a potential problem based on how I explained it would function. He then fixed it but in my mind this should have been a non issue from the get go.
So in essence my question is how do I explain what I want and should a programmer be asking me any questions ? Or do I have to have everything spelled out even if I am not a programmer because its seemed like I need to know programming to explain how I want the software to function. And where / how do I find a good one ?
What’s to stop the technical cofounder from doing all the work, getting sick of the inequality in effort then usurp the whole idea?
That seems to happen a lot when one person is a programmer and one person isn’t because the programmer is the only one who can really execute the idea
With any product you have 2 parallel streams going on -
Product Development doesn’t just involve “building it”, there is also tons of UI / UX work, and the most important job of a Product Owner of figuring out what features to prioritize and what is the go to market strategy.
Then there is Customer Development, where you actively talk to customers to figure out their pain points and try to deeply understand the problem, and how you could potentially solve it.
There is also marketing and sales, which is related to Customer Development but is it’s own thing.
The idea is that everyone contributes to all these parts of the company, while the technical founder manages how to build it, and with what quality requirements. But the other founders are involved in every other part of the company.
There’s more to just making it. There’s knowing what to make (Product or Research), and designing what to make (UI/UX) and then selling or pushing what you make. You got the 3 H’s (hacker, hustler, hipster) and each would bring unique skills. 99% of programmers cannot design or sell worth a cent.
You can use slicing pie model https://slicingpie.com/learn-slicing-pie-model/ to turn everything into a “slice” and calculate fair market value. Time, relationships, money even ideas all have fair market value. You can have real time calculation of equity. In most primitive way you have time based vesting but more advanced tracking like slicing pie has no fixed equity chunks. If someone was lazy and did nothing and got fired, the treatment of their “slices” would be different than if someone walked away for either bad or good reasons. When the startup gets funding, slicing pie model ends and you can accurately price and hire. People’s “slices” (equity) is paid off then and you move into salaries and normal compensation.
The builder can try to “usurp” the whole idea but then they would need another person to do the selling and the designing. The sales guy can walk away too and so can the designer. The risk is the same.
In many startups, the early work can be heavily tilted towards the business side. You have to figure out what you’re building before you want to actually start building. This means talking to customers, building a landing page, ad campaign, etc. Some companies may need more early technical development, but you’ve got problems if the business-side cofounder isn’t doing this.