How I builT MY MVP Without a Developer or CTO
I now have total control over my platform when I get feedback from users.
I quit my job to pursue my goal of starting a company from nothing. I’ve wanted to say that for as long as I can remember but lacked the two ingredients needed to walk the path; a good idea and belief in myself. After plenty of inner turmoil and approval-seeking behaviors aimed at my friends and family, I pulled the trigger at age 33.
This isn’t meant to be a motivational piece leaves it at; “you can reach your dreams if take a chance and don’t give up”. I’ve been told that many times and it does nothing but make you feel good for a little while. Rather, I offer an honest account of my entry point into entrepreneurship, my top three failures (so far), what they cost me and the alternative path that was right in front of my face the whole time. But before all that, a little context is due.
Before I chose human resources as a career path, I made pizza, waited tables and cleaned offices. I paid my way through college supplemented by financial aid and culminating in a Master’s in Organizational Psychology. My parents instilled a strong work ethic and do-it-yourself attitude from a young age. I point these things out because none of these experiences scream “tech-founder” but I’m guessing that if you’re reading, you have a similar story.
Fast forward to 2019, I have 10+ years HR experience with a focus on pay practices (aka compensation) and a vision to build a place where employees can customize how they’re paid. To illustrate with a simple example, say you decline your employer’s medical coverage because you’re covered somewhere else. You lose the dollar contribution that the employer would have made towards that benefit which reduces your overall compensation. Say you had the option to put that money instead towards your student loan debt or your retirement plan or anything else that solves a pain point in your life.
Sounds cool, right? Most people that I talk to think so but after the euphoria of endless possibility and riches wore off, I was left with a more practical question. How do I build something like that? This is where the problems start and I’ll call them mistakes instead of failures. You hear “fail early and fail fast” thrown around a lot, but failure implies finality whereas mistakes can be corrected with effort.
Like me, you probably have a great new solution to a problem that everyone seems to be ignoring. Your domain experience forced you to take the steps to analyze and understand the problem at a deep level. You may fancy yourself an Excel whiz and have an elementary knowledge of databases, css or javascript. You know how to use Angular and React….in a sentence. If reading a Wikipedia article about Angular or React makes your head spin, then you’re also likely to make the same mistakes that I did.
I’m going to tell you what happens when a non-technical person has a technical solution to a problem. Rest assured that I made every mistake that I’m about to lay out.
Mistake #1 - Someone is going to steal my idea
The first thing that settles in after euphoria is paranoia. I limited discussion of my idea to one close friend and my fiancé. It’s easy to fall into this trap when all you have is the idea so you guard it with your life. I would even limit my Google searches because then Google would know what I was working on. Operating in stealth mode sucks. Not only are you missing out on valuable feedback from users or prospective buyers of your idea but you’re wasting time by waiting for your idea to synthesize somewhere else. I cured paranoia with cash. I dropped around $10K in lawyer fees on provisional patent application before my idea saw the light of day.
In hindsight, I wish I could have avoided that costly mistake. No one stole my idea and the reason is way simpler than the patent application process. Here it is - no one thinks my idea is as good as I do. Even when you get someone to listen to you, they won’t see it as worth the effort needed to actually execute the idea. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of horror stories on the internet to contradict this, but my money is on these are few and far between and the story is never as simple as people say. Whether this investment eventually pays off for me remains to be seen but I can tell you with confidence that it was way too early to start thinking about intellectual property. No one is stealing your idea, so stop worrying.
Cost: $10,000 and 4 months
Mistake # 2 - Hire a developer to build a minimum viable product (MVP)
If you have a development budget, this route is tempting. Mine was my savings but you may also have early investments from friends and family or a kickstarter campaign. I took my business to Upwork. For those of you who are unfamiliar, it’s a site where technical people will bid for your job. It certainly felt good to slap together a job description and get 15 proposals in a matter of minutes.
The hardest part is choosing who to work with. If you don’t have a technical background, this is especially tough because you kind of just have to trust what you’re being told by the freelancers. You may be lucky enough to have a technical person in your network, but you’ll still be relying on them for their opinion without forming one of your own. I worked with about 5 developers (both state-side and abroad) before choosing one team with a stellar reputation and who built an application for someone that I know.
It started off great. They were responsive and seemed to understand the product that I was building. It was like this for about a month until the user interface was complete and it was time to start programming the application’s functionality. My point-of-contact switched from the business analyst to the hands-on developer.
As in all human endeavors, the most challenging part of this experience was communication. And I’m not referring to language barriers though if there is one that makes it infinitely more complicated. No, communication of your idea to the person who’s building it for you. As clear as it is in your head, you’ll never be able to explain it with the detail and precision needed to convert it into the technical document that a freelancer will understand. To do so would be just as hard as coding the thing yourself. I spent hours, days and weeks creating documentation detailing all of the specs that I wanted only to be disappointed when the team misunderstood what I wanted or ignored the request altogether. It would take them weeks to get back to me and I’d be sitting around waiting for an update.
Aside from the communication, the main issue that I have with this route is that you just don’t know what you’re building yet. You need to change and iterate fast based on user feedback and freelancer arrangements don’t work this way. Their goal is to serve as many clients as their capacity allows which doesn’t leave time for last minute changes. The result was another $10K, 8 months of lost time and an MVP that I couldn’t test. They provided no technical documentation for what they built so I couldn’t even bring it to another developer without starting the whole process over again. If you start with a freelancer, you are married to that freelancer and you need them more than they need you.
Cost: Another $10,000 and 8 months
Mistake # 3 - Find a CTO to build your dream with
Finding a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) seems like a logical solution after you’ve explored the freelancer route. I thought to myself, I’ll be so compelling and confident in my idea that I’ll inspire a technical person to join me for a 20% stake in the company. We’ll build a crazy good MVP with my domain experience and their tech background and it’ll be a match made in heaven.
Again, I was wrong.
Do you know how easy it is for an engineer to get a job? They get 10 - 15 calls a day from recruiters with a “tremendous new opportunity” at a hot new company. As one developer put it, “it’s an annoying amount of opportunity”. There’s just too many options being thrown at them from recruiters, established companies and startup ideas from their own network. Let’s not forget that they probably have their own ideas and dreams that they can build without you. The chances of getting someone to love your idea so much and then trusting you enough to work with you is a long-shot. It’s not worth the time.
I got a lot of a lot of “oh that’s a great idea”, “I’d love to help you with that”, “let’s talk about that.”.The disappointment starts when trying to nail down deadlines and milestones. At first, the responses will be polite and apologetic but over time, there will be days where you don’t hear from them and eventually you’ll start feeling like a nag. Fortunately, I didn’t spend too much time going down this route because I recognized the same patterns from my freelancer experience. It’s also difficult to forgive someone who you feel has stymied your path to greatness. I don’t suggest doing this with anyone who you have a close personal relationship with.
You need them more than they need you.
Cost: 2 months and 2 relationships
A Shining Beacon of Hope - Bubble
Right around this time, I started re-exploring an up-and-coming platform that I toyed with back when I was paranoid that someone was going to steal my idea but ultimately judged it to be not worth the time to learn. That was Bubble. It’s a full-stack visual programming language where non-technical people can build web-applications without code.
Sounds too good to be true - what’s the catch? There are two questions that every person who is thinking about using Bubble asks themselves:
Can Bubble do what I want it to?
Is it worth my time to learn how to build it?
I still ask myself these questions and my MVP is built. I’m not going to lie to you - the learning curve is steep. It took me about a month working 8 hours a day (160 hours all in) to build it, but compared to the 14 months and $20K that I lost with the first two routes, you can see why it’s worth it. I now have total control over my platform and when I get feedback from users, I make changes in a matter of minutes or hours depending on how complicated the change is. The difference is night and day if you compare it to the days or weeks you wait for a freelancer to get back to you with a quote and a timeline. Bubble gives you total control over your journey. Even when you’re pulling your hair out trying to figure out something that you think should be simple, take it from me that this stress is nothing compared to the stress of not having control over your own application.
If they’ve heard of it, you’ll hear a critical tone from developers and engineers when talking about Bubble. Invariably, they’ll bombard you with technical questions that you won’t be able to answer. Chances are that they haven’t spent much time working in Bubble and feel a slight tinge of resentment that you taught yourself how to do something in a month that it took them a 4 year degree to learn. Don’t feel obliged to answer chapter 10 questions when you’re still writing your preface.
Your focus should be on traction, not scale and as far as I can see there are no limitations to either on Bubble. The only limitation is that not many people outside of the Bubble community (which is 300,000 strong) can help you with your questions. The fortunate thing about this is that it will strip your platform down to the studs to only include the bare essential functions needed demonstrate your idea. If a feature is so complicated that it takes you weeks to figure it out how to program, it probably shouldn’t be in your MVP in the first place.
By the way if you’re curious, you can see my MVP at Payhouse.
Bubble has a steep learning curve that you have to overcome. It’s easy to get started and you’ll build a fancy little UI in a matter of hours - which will make you overestimate your own abilities. It’s when you start programming the functionality and setting up your data structures that you have that “oh shit, this is hard” moment like I did. Push through.
From there you’ll ebb and flow through intense frustration and equal satisfaction. Everything that you get working is a small victory in itself so keep learning and you’ll never have to rely on someone else to build your dream.
Jon Melo,
Founder, Payhouse