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Comment by yolo3000 | Hacker News Reader

I've consulted in this sort of role for a startup which hired a dev agency. A few months in, we were behind schedule. I've asked them access to their git repo and built some graphs with the commits and LOC changes of every dev we paid for. It became clear that these devs were working on multiple other assignments and were not really dedicated to us. Without these sort of insights, it's hard to judge if they are honest or not.

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I'll make suggestions to anyone doing this:

- For slightly more legal protection, the code should be in YOUR OWN git repo, not the dev agency's repo

- If you are giving some upfront $ or milestone payment, you should also contractually now own the code up to that point in time

- You should not declare a milestone success (and should not pay) until you can independently compile the app straight from git (front end and backend) (Also, watch out for hard-coded domains where you are secretly pointing to their backend and not to your independently compiled one)

- App QA should ONLY be on the version of the app where you compiled/deployed the full stack yourself

- You should deploy the app into your own cloud to ensure you actually have all the pieces. Super extra credit: Build Terraform/Ansible/Chef into the SoW and final payment should depend on deployment into your own environment by YOU (not the agency)

- You should learn how to build/compile/deploy yourself or hire an independent person (not the devs) who can do this for you

If you can do all this, you're either already a developer and don't need to outsource it, or you have the ability to learn how.

In general, I agree. There is enormous hidden equity in being a technical co-founder that is unappreciated until non-technical founders are burnt several times.

That said, I did present two ideas for those who want to venture into this:

- You recognize that the "success" you have in the working app isnt actually a success and plan accordingly

- You hire someone independent who keeps the third parties honest

Another one:

- You cut corners, get a working demo, raise good VC funds and hire a well-compensated technical co-founder or founding engineer who is compensated sufficiently to be happy short term and has sufficient equity to want long term success

...or don't have time

Excellent but dangerous advice. I really hope non-technical people don't read the tips here and think they're now prepared to navigate this process.

100% agree. I've yet to see a startup succeed w/o a technical co-founder. I do angel investments and have never cut a check to a founding team w/o checking for the above checklist. For teams with good founding CTOs, they get it for free if the person is sharp about process.

But the whole discussion was what non-technical founders would do, and this is probably the second-best advice I could give. Moreso, to recognize the myriad risks and understand things arent quite as easy as posting a project on Upwork.

The first-best advice I could give is to get a technical co-founder.

Oh yes, there's so many things that you should do. This was only to grasp the code they were doing. You need a technical advisor who is on your side and can challenge the dev agency. You also need to strike a balance between giving them some slack and fighting to get a solid solution. We relied on the dev agency until we got the initial 2mln investment, afterwards we hired internal devs who took over. But if we scared them too much we might have compromised the investment.

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