Ask HN: Nontech solo founder, how to build with freelancer devs

I am a tech founder (even though not officially the CTO as I do more CEO stuff now).

I highly recommend against Freelancers or people who will have no future skin in the game. Instead, you need to try and get some type of Prototype built yourself (may be with some help) and then look for a CTO/Co-founder.

Ok, so what can you do to find a CTO:

- Do Wireframes or mockups of your idea (use something like Whimsical or any other mockup tool. Personally I am a big fan of Whimsical and use it daily to mock ideas)

- Get it designed using something like Figma. May be use a Designer Freelancer for that. That's ok

- Put up a landing page using a website builder. Talk about the idea there. Create a signup list if you can.

- Get busy on social media like twitter/linkedin

Do all of these and you may be able to attract a good CTO. The point is to do enough things first to attract the tech co-founder.

Again, do not pay freelancers to build an application unless you really have no leads even after doing all the steps I mentioned above. You will thank me later.

HN

There's a "who's hiring" freelancer version

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40846427

Email in my profile. I run a small agency with a few web & mobile devs. We are in between the projects right now, and generally specialise in early stage startups.

Most of my team is based in eastern Europe so they are a bit more affordable than US / UK prices, but skilled ones are never cheap.

But to answer your questions:

> How do you go about it without getting burned?

The only way we found is via personal recommendations. You might be lucky with your first contact with a random, but could as well be unlucky.

> Do you go to a dev shop, or make a team of individual ones?

Either works, but I think going for a dev shop is a bit better because you know the team already knows how to work together, so there is a lot less initial friction.

> Either works, but I think going for a dev shop is a bit better because you know the team already knows how to work together, so there is a lot less initial friction.

People working in a dev shop don't give a shit and are generally not skilled enough to work by themselves as a freelancer. Plus the agency always doubles the prices. Never go with a dev shop you get worse people for higher prices and in the end nobody there gives a crap.

It depends, I had my team in mind, where we truly enjoy working together and there are just a few of us. But you are right, large dev shops are often horrible places. If you want to hire everyone yourself you probably need some tech skills and ideally a network.

I once hired a dev shop with one manager and one employee, lol. I don't really know why, but I decided to give it a shot. So I gave them the absolute simplest task of creating a login screen. Could someone screw up a login screen for $50? The specs were clearly on PDF, with font weights and padding given.

My god, they really set the bar on not giving a shit. After several failed attempts to follow the specifications, I just gave them the $50 and a terrible review on Upwork. They responded with a terrible review as well.

There's nothing really preventing some charismatic stranger on the internet from claiming his team is not like the other teams. No offense, but some evidence is always helpful.

$50 on upwork is far from "hiring a dev shop"

Get a co founder, everything else will be problematic. If that is not possible a freelancer that might become a co founder later. Switching in between will be horrible and slow things down to death.

NEVER EVER go with a dev shop. High prices, bad people and the worse they won't care at all and can never become your co founder. Your thing will be doomed from the start.

Hi, we can help out with this as we provide pre-vetted developers that would work full time on building your MVP. Happy to provide client references and the budget you have would work with us. Do you have an email where we can discuss?

> I need a team of freelancers to build the MVP.

Why a team? How about just one.

> where do you find effective and affordable freelancers?

upwork.com

Ideally you'll have good requirements for what you want. If it's a web product create a wireframe. If you can create a clickable HTML wireframe even better.

If there's an open source equivalent just use that.

Since things on the product front won't really be well defined and the process will be iterative your best bet is to find devs who are eager to learn by working on the first or first larger real world project — depending on the domain specifics, etc.

But where do I look for them? Upwork? Toptal?

Hi, hope you are well. We can offer full time developers that are pre-vetted to build the MVP. Happy to share client references and examples links of MVP our team have done. My email is in the bio if you would like to jump on a quick call.

Let me know if you are able to send an email. Would love to build a solid MVP for yourself.

> how and where do you find effective and affordable freelancers?

Something things I've found important.

1) Hire at the cheaper end of the devs your looking at. I've found within price/experience bands, price and quality are not correlated. I prefer to hire at the lower end of expectation, then if a dev shows themself as good, give them an solid pay bump early, like 3/4 months into working together. This way you get a good person, and someone that knows you will look after them as you took the pay rise to them.

2) Fire fast. By nature I like to work things out and help people but if people have troubles early, move them on fast, its most likely going to get worse and you'll beat your head against a a wall trying to fix them and it will take from the project.

3) Document the shit out of what you need + do a dummy visual version. When things get to the pointy end its too easy to get to arguments about what you agree, what you agreed means, or what is 'expected' even if not stated specifically. A dummy version helps sort a bunch of this out - it adds extra but will really help over doing more written notes and key screens only plus helps you plan your product better.

4) Clear payment milestones. Make it fair but you need real deliverables for each payment so you can get what you paid for.

5) Leave at least 30% for extras. No matter how much you plan it out, you'll find extras as you go.

I can’t promise anything, and I’m sometimes very slow to respond to emails, but I might be able to arrange for introductions. Feel free to shoot me an email.

As a longtime freelance mvp dev, I prefer Craigslist because I don't have to fill out forms or pay commissions. Instead, I can just send a simple email.

  > prefer Craigslist

Seconded. Upwork and Toptal aren't what they used to be.