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MenuWhen is it better to find a technical co-founder before developing an MVP vs. hiring a freelancer to build it for you, and vice-versa?
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A co-founder is a long-term relationships that should be built on trust, and passion, and time... time to fight, time to recover, time to build rapport. Ultimately, your co-founder shouldn't be based on *any* specific idea, because the two (or three?) of you could work on anything you are all passionate about, and either experience wild success or learn some great lessons along the way.
An MVP doesn't require a co-founder get built. In fact, the less technical code required the better. You should be able to validate most ideas with some very basic tools: WordPress site, Email list, a set of google forms, and a little love.
I think the most important question to ask yourself is, "Am I willing to have my idea change for the right person? Or am I just trying to find the best person to execute on my idea?"
For what it's worth, I've seen much more success with the former than the latter.
I push back on the premise of the question.
Before you look to find a co-founder or spend a cent on building something, make sure you've thought your idea through. Who are you for? What's the problem you solve? Are you clear on the insight you are working against and the positioning you will use when you bring the product to market? Many of the problems I end up working with founding teams on down the road can actually be traced to them having started out building something and then trying to figure out how to sell it, rather than starting with the need and a clear view of their prospective customer.
Spend your time and money there, first.
Co-founders are permanent, long-term members of your team and a technical co-founder is someone who has a long view of the product's development, is committed to seeing it happen, and can make it happen. If you don't need that, sub out.
Agree with the answers above. By definition, you don't need a technical co-founder before you create your MVP. Sometimes an MVP can be a free landing page or Wordpress or Mailchimp list, Eventbrite or some combination. Once you have traction and customers and a functioning MVP, any good technical co-founder will be more interested in taking a look and having a conversation with you.
Related Questions
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Shall we register our company before testing the MVP?
I do not believe you should incorporate your company yet as there is a chance you will scrap the idea or iterate on the assumptions after analysis. I suggest you run your initial testing on a very minimal MVP to see if there is interest. I would go further in saying that you should not even allow people to pay only have them click on the payment option because at that point you know that it would be a conversion. The ONLY thing you are proving with an MVP is validation of an idea. Only make the mousetrap front end and see if you can drive users to where you want and stop. Even if you frustrate some people, it was worth it as you now know for sure people will buy or do what it is you wanted. Schedule a call with me to find out more. God knows I have done this enough times. Good luck JoshJJ
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Are you at risk of your competitors copying your features by building MVPs?
Yep. Although I don't think that's limited to MVPs. It's just always the case. You can copy code, features, etc. but you can't copy soul. There will always be people who copy you. It's better to keep moving forward and accept the copy cats than it would be to try and shield yourself. Keep an eye on the copy cats. But in the long run, if you're authentic and worthy, you will beat them.JR
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How to launch an MVP for an on-demand delivery startup?
There isn't a lot of published information that I've seen (or can quickly find) on how washio and postmates validated their business model, but I definitely agree that starting fairly lean and validating your business first even if that means a lot of manual effort up front is a better approach than investing heavily in infrastructure before launch. Of course, if you are very successful, that manual work will pile up quickly and managing it could be quite painful, but you can have worse problems than a successful launch. Maff Rigby's 7-day startup recommendation is definitely a good one.GW
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What's the best way to build a MVP web app that handles order management, purchasing, invoicing, supplier management and inventory?
The best way to build an MVP for any SaaS product is to create a landing page that looks like a real product. Here's an example of one I built. http://www.happiily.com In this case, it advertises the primary features of the product and invites people to sign-up. When they do, they are asked for information which qualifies the person and then sends me an email. I built this quickly and very inexpensively and started getting inbound leads from it shortly thereafter. I got on the phone with each person who signed-up and explained the features I wanted to build and was able to do a lot of customer learning based on that. Happy to talk to you in a call if you'd like to talk more about customer development with SaaS products.TW
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Once an MVP is on, how long does it take to be sure my start up is successful and go to the next stage? Which number do I need to know it was success?
It depends on what are you testing by launching MVP. MVP is use to run an experiment to test (validate / invalidate) business assumptions (Customer, problem, solution , channel ... assumptions). If your are interested, I can share some material about MVP and validating business assumptionsIF
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