1/ If you’re a non-technical founder, you should absolutely build v1 of your product yourself and not outsource it. Here’s a tweetstorm outlining why:
2/ So you have an idea and want to build a product, but don’t know how to code. You may be considering having someone build your “MVP” for you. MVP is a loaded term, let's call it v1 – a "product" which will deliver on the core value proposition to your customers
3/ When building v1 and making contact with customers, speed of learning and iteration the biggest priority. Outsourcing drastically lengthens the time to launch and the time required for iterations (especially if it’s a custom solution). By DIY, you’ll learn things 10x+ faster
4/ Early on, you need to be extremely close to both your product and your customer so that you can feel the pains of adoption, usage, and scaling. Outsourcing creates distance between you, the product, and customers, hindering your ability to become your own product expert.
5/ For v1, an 80% product should suffice. If you think you need the last 20% of polish for v1 that a custom technical solution provides, then either status quo is not painful enough for your customers, or your proposed solution is wrong.
6/ Not being able to code can be an advantage over technical founders when building and iterating on v1 – it will push you to find such strong problem-solution fit that customers love your product despite a less-than-ideal user experience.
7/ Outsourcing from the start also creates an external dependency for making progress. Product/tech is just one of many moving parts of starting up. Early on, external dependencies are a killer, as they prevent you from figuring out the many other parts of the business model.
8/ Finally, it’s never been easier to build v1s of products without code. You can use tools like Bubble, Squarespace, Airtable, Google Sheets, Zapier, Twilio, Stripe, Slack, Typeform, and more to mimic minimal versions of almost any popular “tech” product.
9/ Choosing to outsource early is choosing to delegate irresponsibly. The cost of learning to using these tools is nothing compared to the costs of outsourcing the creation of your product. If you need help, check out @newco and @AppsWithoutCode cc @bentossell @TaraReed_
