Launching your startup for cheap

Established organizations have specific [web] development needs - they’re tying into existing processes, technical or otherwise. The projects we work on for these organizations are custom, they’re involved, and they’re expensive when compared to what we could do for someone without existing processes.

Quick head check before I go any further. Expensive is a relative term. Custom projects plug directly into business demands, and, thus return their investment very quickly. Strategies vary based on business stage.

But what if the business demand is uncertain, as in the case of a startup idea? Strategy would dictate a race to prototype, spending less time and money in the initial process.

So how do you speed up and price down that race? I’ll tell you…

Leverage open-source code.

If you can get happy with the built-in functionality of freely-available code (i.e.: Pligg) and find a team to implement / design / customize, you will significantly decrease your cost. Development firms base proposals on the expected or actual time on a project. If our time is reduced, so is our price (by half or more in most cases.)

Seems pretty basic, right? We aren’t done yet.

Do your own research.

Don’t expect a solid development team to research free alternatives to their work. You’ll need to do that yourself. Here are three different ways you can approach a development firm…

1. I need a site developed that will…
2. I need a site developed that takes advantage of freely-available software that will…
3. I need a site based on a straight mediawiki implementation with the following customizations…

Here are the respective responses you could expect…

1. Great.
2. We aren’t interested.
3. Great.

I’m not sure why I used mediawiki as an example, but you get the idea. Just make sure you know exactly what you’re looking for, or the developers will have little incentive to help you out. Your goal is to find the best team at the best price, and the best teams are typically busy. In addition to providing clear project specifications, make sure you understand what you’re asking for.

We were recently outed by Guy Kawasaki as the developers that helped him launch truemors on the cheap. $4,500 went towards the development of his rumor aggregating, crowd sourcing prototype. Guy pushed us to use freely-available apps (we used WordPress,) plug-ins and add-ons wherever they existed, and he did a lot of research himself. There was plenty of custom work as well, but there were benefits for us to offset the additional work. Which brings me to the next think you can do…

Recognize the developers.

There’s no reason to hide the fact that you involved developers to launch your idea. Give them credit. You want the team to stay engaged, and you’d be surprised how far public compliments go. Guy sent us hundreds of leads for our work on his project. Being involved in the truemors fray has been good fun and good for business, and we’ve kept our head in it as a result.

If all goes well, launching your prototype is only the beginning. As your idea turns into a full-fledged, gainful business, you want to make sure you have the right partners. And if it doesn’t go well, you’ve limited your loss. You can just walk away and start again.

That’s it. Easy.

Note: If you’re one of our crazy successful clients (or you’d like to be,) please don’t use this post against us. Your goal as an established player is to make money rather than save it - I dedicated the second paragraph of this post specifically to you.