4 ms·

I can't help but agree. Technology is hard to grasp without study. Study takes time, which founders don't have. People with technical expertise are expensive. I

I can't help but agree. Technology is hard to grasp without study. Study takes time, which founders don't have. People with technical expertise are expensive. If you don't have the expertise yourself, you have to hire it. He's got 200k and he's bled 125k of that just to make his MVP. That's utterly insane to me.

luckylion 4y ago
App studios are often quoting high prices though. I have no idea about app development, but I regularly hear about quotes for relatively simple apps (i.e. you could do it with Wordpress and a custom theme as a web app) that are 30-50k euros. I don't know if these agencies just make insane profits or if they really make everything super complicated and need three developers working for a month to produce a simple crud app.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  They probably need to factor in some percentage of people not paying or suing them in their pricing, which is a shame, because it increases the cost for customers who pay on time, know what they want, and accept responsibility if the thing doesn't work out.
- ekidd 4y ago
  The basic pitch that I've heard a (competent) app development shop make was, "Look, we have a reputation for doing this right. And it's cheaper to pay us to develop an app than it is to open up a coin laundromat." I'm not sure if it's actually a good idea for a solo, non-technical founder to hire an app shop like that. Too many founders are deluding themselves, and will just lose all their money no matter what they do. But if you're the sort of founder who can get several B2B customers to sign non-binding letters of intent saying, "Yes, we would totally buy X if it actually existed", then those app development costs would be totally reasonable.
- adunsulag 4y ago
  There's always a nuance, and I laugh when people tell me 'this is relatively simple'. It often seems like it can be done with wordpress but if the client is fixed that the app MUST function in a way that wordpress doesn't accommodate... well then the costs go up dramatically to rebuild some form of wordpress but not using wordpress... I often like to present things in terms of costs alternatives to my clients. IF it MUST be done with that feature it will cost X dollars to build it that way. If we remove that feature or do this alternative approach we can bring the cost down to Y where Y is much cheaper. It takes a good technical person who is business minded to be able to see these win/win scenarios though. 99% of the time people choose the cheaper option when they find out it can be done for 10K instead of 50K. Its one of the reasons why you need a good technical cofounder who is ALSO familiar with business strategy to be able to choose from alternatives instead of doing whatever the business guy insists has to be done.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Sure, complicated things can increase costs, but my impression is that a lot of the apps don't need to be "real apps", because they don't do anything mobile specific, they could be a webview + Wordpress because they're delivering content managed in a CMS, and plenty of them don't even work in airplane mode. A company I work for just bought another company and I was asked to help them on their feet with their website. It's pretty much a standard Wordpress with a custom theme and maybe 300 lines of custom code in plugins. Their agency billed them north of 50k euros. I can tell they got ripped off because there's just nothing there that could conceivably take anywhere near that much work. I have little insight in the app-making process, so I can't tell if everything is just super complicated or app agencies just say "okay, this should be about 50 hours, let's quote 500 hours in case the client changes their mind on some details".
- entropyie 4y ago
  Non-technical people have no idea what is possible, no idea what they actually need and no understanding of the SDLC. I've seen people running organizations of less than 5 people that just need a landing page and a gallery, insist that WordPress cannot possibly address their needs and hire custom web development for $$$. Those agencies deserve the money they get for all the hassle they put up with IMHO.

luckylion 4y ago

App studios are often quoting high prices though. I have no idea about app development, but I regularly hear about quotes for relatively simple apps (i.e. you could do it with Wordpress and a custom theme as a web app) that are 30-50k euros. I don't know if these agencies just make insane profits or if they really make everything super complicated and need three developers working for a month to produce a simple crud app.

pcthrowaway 4y ago
They probably need to factor in some percentage of people not paying or suing them in their pricing, which is a shame, because it increases the cost for customers who pay on time, know what they want, and accept responsibility if the thing doesn't work out.
ekidd 4y ago
The basic pitch that I've heard a (competent) app development shop make was, "Look, we have a reputation for doing this right. And it's cheaper to pay us to develop an app than it is to open up a coin laundromat." I'm not sure if it's actually a good idea for a solo, non-technical founder to hire an app shop like that. Too many founders are deluding themselves, and will just lose all their money no matter what they do. But if you're the sort of founder who can get several B2B customers to sign non-binding letters of intent saying, "Yes, we would totally buy X if it actually existed", then those app development costs would be totally reasonable.
adunsulag 4y ago
There's always a nuance, and I laugh when people tell me 'this is relatively simple'. It often seems like it can be done with wordpress but if the client is fixed that the app MUST function in a way that wordpress doesn't accommodate... well then the costs go up dramatically to rebuild some form of wordpress but not using wordpress... I often like to present things in terms of costs alternatives to my clients. IF it MUST be done with that feature it will cost X dollars to build it that way. If we remove that feature or do this alternative approach we can bring the cost down to Y where Y is much cheaper. It takes a good technical person who is business minded to be able to see these win/win scenarios though. 99% of the time people choose the cheaper option when they find out it can be done for 10K instead of 50K. Its one of the reasons why you need a good technical cofounder who is ALSO familiar with business strategy to be able to choose from alternatives instead of doing whatever the business guy insists has to be done.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Sure, complicated things can increase costs, but my impression is that a lot of the apps don't need to be "real apps", because they don't do anything mobile specific, they could be a webview + Wordpress because they're delivering content managed in a CMS, and plenty of them don't even work in airplane mode. A company I work for just bought another company and I was asked to help them on their feet with their website. It's pretty much a standard Wordpress with a custom theme and maybe 300 lines of custom code in plugins. Their agency billed them north of 50k euros. I can tell they got ripped off because there's just nothing there that could conceivably take anywhere near that much work. I have little insight in the app-making process, so I can't tell if everything is just super complicated or app agencies just say "okay, this should be about 50 hours, let's quote 500 hours in case the client changes their mind on some details".
entropyie 4y ago
Non-technical people have no idea what is possible, no idea what they actually need and no understanding of the SDLC. I've seen people running organizations of less than 5 people that just need a landing page and a gallery, insist that WordPress cannot possibly address their needs and hire custom web development for $$$. Those agencies deserve the money they get for all the hassle they put up with IMHO.