You have an excellent idea for your next startup venture. You’ve identified a niche problem and even analyzed your audience to validate your idea. Now, you have to pitch it to your investors and need a workable, functioning product to show them.
Hang on, you realize you don’t have a technical partner – who’s going to build your MVP? Maybe you should give it a try yourself. But, you’re not that great a coder. You know the basics well enough, but this is some deep stuff. So what do you do?
Does this sound familiar?
I’m sure you’ve been in this situation at least once. The fortunate ones found a technical co-founder who helped them code their way out, but not everybody has that option available. Besides, finding a technical co-founder who shares your vision and drive is not as easy as it sounds. So, the rest of us are now left with three options –
- Build a crude model of the solution with the tools on hand
- Hire a freelance developer to build a basic, working model
- Hire a development agency to get a fully-functioning, pitch-ready MVP
If you decide to go with the first option, where you handle all the work manually at the backend, it is going to end up taking a lot of time as the number of customers increases. In such a case, I’m not even discussing scalability, because it wouldn’t be feasible.
The second option is like playing the trust game. You fall and hope your freelance developer catches you, or be ready to crash painfully. Besides, a freelancer who is great at coding, timely, communicative, prompt, economical, and reachable in your working hours is a rare combination.
Which leaves you with the last option – hiring a development agency to build a pitch-ready MVP.
Why Should You Outsource MVP Development?
A lot of startup founders are skeptical about outsourcing their MVP development to development companies. Security of intellectual property is not the only concern. They have a lot of questions – Can the agency assist me with idea validation? Will the team deliver the project on time? What about code dependability? How much is outsourcing the MVP development to a company going to cost me? What if I want to pivot halfway through?
The overall aura of back-breakingly expensive MVP development agencies tends to discourage startups from investing in a dependable source and turn towards unreliable options. It is time to change this perspective.
Outsourcing your MVP development to a legit agency can be a really good alternative because of several reasons. Let’s discuss a few of these.
- Technical Consultation and Support
An established development agency comes with experienced software developers and years of work in the field. They can be knowledgeable partners who can understand your vision perfectly and help make your idea a reality. Their years of experience help them identify practical problems that may arise during development and come up with solutions to work around those as well.
An efficient team of developers essentially gives you a bunch of technical co-founders. They help you see your MVP from multiple perspectives and provide consistent support in terms of software development.
- Development of Strong Code Base
Application development companies have a strong knowledge of software development including the platforms that can be used to build the solution, the languages for coding, UI frameworks, testing tools, and more. Consequently, they are able to build a strong foundation for your MVP, which is cleanly coded and structured. The entire logic flow is perfectly understandable, making it easier for your future in-house development team to manage the application.
- Structured Process
Working with an experienced development company enables you to follow and implement a structured process throughout the creation of your MVP. The flow is smooth and uninterrupted, right from the initial discussion to the final product delivery. Communication plays an important role here, with a good MVP development agency staying in constant contact with you at every stage of the process. This gives you a clear idea of how long the project is going to take and the status of step-by-step development.
- Determining the Future of the Product
As your development team works on building the MVP, they can help you assess the future of the product as well. Their experience can again come handy here, as they can help you understand what problems, if any, may arise in the functionality of the product over time. Additionally, once you have built a nice rapport, they can even give suggestions on how you can scale the product or pivot if you reach an impasse.
- Rapid Turnaround Time
A dedicated resource of skilled developers means that your MVP is ready lightning-fast. Instead of having to wait for a full-man team and then starting the project, you have the help of professionals who can hit the ground running. Work gets divided efficiently, with every developer pulling his weight in the team. Wastage of time is completely eliminated and you have a market-ready solution within a few months.
- Focused Product Development
When you have a team of developers from an MVP development agency working for you, your entire focus remains concentrated on the MVP. Far from being bogged down by worries like building your in-house team of developers, and all the hassles of recruitment, training, competency measurement, and resource integration, you can instead stay actively involved in project development.
- Project Management Made Easy
Continuing in the same vein, the consequence of having dedicated resources without any recruitment or training involved is that project management is made really easy. You bring your idea to the table, the agency brings its expertise. Together, you can get a fair estimate of the feasibility, duration, and schedule of the project. This helps you plan and allocate project funds accordingly, which is crucial in managing the entire process flow, not just the MVP development part. You can decide your beta testing timelines, marketing, and promotion strategy as well as ways to attract investors once you have a strong technical partner in place.
- Long-Term Partnership
The advantage of having a technical partner like an MVP development agency with you is that even after the initial development is complete, you can continue to work with them till all the nitty-gritty details are sorted out. Additionally, they can initially work side-by-side with your gradually growing in-house team, showing them the ropes of how the product has been coded. Once your in-house team has understood how your product can work and scale, you can bid adieu to the development agency on a good note. The professional approach and time-specific commitment make it easy all around!
Endnote
People tend to have a lot of misconceptions about hiring development agencies for MVP application development, citing high costs and potential theft of intellectual property. The latter is highly unlikely and the former is not a factor that should influence this big a decision. Money matters, yes, but as a budding entrepreneur, you cannot compromise on quality for cost.
A better way to think of this is by considering them your technical partners. When you have a strong, ethical, and talented commitment definitely partner, a lot of your worries are smoothed and you can maintain a focused approach towards product development and launch.
As technical developers ourselves, we realize the problems you face in MVP development and are here to help you out.
What is your opinion about working with a development agency..whoops.. technical partner, for building your MVP application? Feel free to discuss your views in the comments section below!
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