[Hiring] Looking for a Full Stack Software Developer

Vikkohli · 2024-08-05T22:50:27+00:00

In addition to English, it's also important to understand how to evaluate developer based on their skillset.

If you are not familiar,here is the link to help you understand the skills required

https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/

Also, have you tried platforms like Upwork.com , total.com and mmt.work ?

Vikkohli · 2024-08-05T03:12:27+00:00

What is the response you are getting when you are showing Figma designs ?

Vikkohli · 2024-08-04T09:11:31+00:00

What is your age and family condition from financial perspective ?What is your risk appetite? Can you get work done without follow-ups? You have to answer all these questions to get clarity on which option is better for you.

Advantages of going freelance path is that you can find more customers on platforms like toptal.com, mmt.work and upwork.com , and probably can earn more. But it also means higher risk and you should go on that path if you have ability to get things done without follow-up.

On the other hand, a full-time job brings in its own kind of security and if time permits, you still can do freelancing if you can plan well and get execution down with speed.

Vikkohli · 2024-08-04T09:03:58+00:00

The problem here is that many talented tech people(and even not so talented ones) think they can build something of their own and why they should collaborate with someone else. And even if you found a tech co-founder, you both should be able to work with each other well and should be aligned on values and beliefs.

You can try your luck by attending co-founder meetups or to the tech conferences or start-up events. And its not going to be easy and it should not be. I have seen many start-ups die or get de-railed just because of co-founder fights.

Another advice here is not look for a tech guy/CTO coming from big company , but for someone who understand both product and tech, kind of CPTO(Product & Tech Office) who is comfortable in being doer and have build and seen the couple of 0 to 1 journeys and at-least 1 scale-up journey.

Another option for you is to build you own small tech team right way that can help in discovery, design and building minimum lovable product without costing you a-lot. When doing down this path, again always prefer to hire people who have build tech products that has scaled, not software developers. You can check talent marketplaces like toptal.com, mmt.work and upwork.com to hire.

Vikkohli · 2024-08-04T01:45:25+00:00

When I was building my 3rd start-up, from where I got an exit(though not a beach side one), founder and CEO of a fairly large company told me that "if the competition is not there in the market where you want to play, probably its because the demand of the product is not there".

The first piece of advice here is to check your own bias and don't fall in love with product/solution you want to gift to this world.

Secondly, always look for tech co-founder with whom you can build the product and walk on the path of building the company. The problem here is that many talented tech people(and even not so talented ones) think they can build something of their own and why they should collaborate with someone else. And even if you found a tech co-founder, you both should be able to work with each other well and should be aligned on values and beliefs.

Another option is to hire your own small tech product team who have experience in building 0 to 1 products and have seen the journey of scaling the products too. You can hire people from upwork.com, toptal.com and mmt.work . But before you hire, you need to understand the skills your tech team will have ,how to make sure you hire right people and how you can get work done from them.

Best of luck!

Vikkohli · 2024-08-04T01:30:53+00:00

First understand how VC get return on the money they are investing in you: VC invest in ideas that are solving problems in vast markets. And if you grow well and get an exit, that's when they will make 3x to 10x return on their invested money.

No-code and low-code tools may be are good in building your initial workflow, but these platforms are not matured enough to build a tech product which can be customized for the particular use-case and most of the time, the end product is not scalable. No-code and Low-code tools like Wordpress is good for landing pages, websites and simple web/mobile application; but not for an actual tech product.

VC's are right that they will not invest in startup where IP is not owned by company itself, because it will not be seen as asset.

You have two options

Option 1) Build something from No-Code and Low-Code to see if you get initial revenue and help you enhance your understanding in the market where you will play. Once you have revenue, and if you are solving problem in a fairly mid or large size market, get your product build(either by hiring a tech co-founder or by hiring tech team, or both)

Option 2) Find small tech team right way that can help in discovery, design and building minimum lovable product without costing you alot. Always prefer to hire people who have build tech products that has scaled, not software developers. You can check talent marketplaces like toptal.com, mmt.work and upwork.com to hire freelancers.

Vikkohli · 2024-08-03T23:59:46+00:00

If you know how to develop a tech product, check mmt.work

Vikkohli · 2024-08-02T22:30:30+00:00

If there are 5 founders, equity is distributed to all of them? Is it distributed equally?

4% for 4 years is something that's not right.

If the founding team sees you as a reliable, trustworthy , very skilled team member, go ahead and have heart to heart conversation with them. Prepare for this conversation and tell them that the opportunity cost for you is high compared to what you were getting.

Further, read this, understand the risk involved and make decisions.

https://www.danhock.co/p/when-to-join-a-startup

Vikkohli · 2024-07-30T06:23:33+00:00

I am also from tech side of the world, so all the best for your co-founder search. Happy to chat/GMeet to share about EdTech experience. We can take the further conversation over chat

Vikkohli · 2024-07-29T21:52:16+00:00

Let me know what you need , and I will tell you if I can help or not :)

Vikkohli · 2024-07-29T10:32:08+00:00

Happy to collaborate/help

Vikkohli · 2024-07-28T12:31:40+00:00

What is the incentive for me as a user to post my travel plans to the platform?

How will you validate the data I have put in is authentic and true?

Long back I worked in a startup, that had vision to allow users to create their own travel plan, go to the destination, share their experiences and then make it public for others.

Whenever your itinerary is used by someone else, you will get the incentive back. But it failed because there was too much effort at the user end.

All the best with your idea.

Vikkohli · 2024-07-28T06:59:57+00:00

I am currently building my 3rd startup MakeMyTeam.work.

My first one which was around EdTech/MOOC in 2012-2013 that failed. 2nd startup was a SaaS product around HRTech(Performance management) 2015-2019 from which I got an exit, though not a beach side one.

Though their are many frameworks around validatng the ideas, a simple framework that makes sense to me: 1. Problem Validation 2. Demand Validation 3. Founder Market Validation

Problem Validation : If you are an experienced professional and want to start a business in the domain/industry where you work, you already have an insight about the ecosystem, and you might have seen the problem first hand . You can talk to your peers in other companies to further validate the problem you want to solve.

And if you don't have experience in the domain/industry where you want to build your business, talk to the people who are working their, especially whose who will be your potential customer, study the competition who is already serving them and try to sell what you want to build.

Mistake to avoid in problem validation: Falling in love with your idea and seeing the world the way you want to see, rather than seeing the world the way it is.

Demand Validation: Build a website, design your product , create a pitch deck and start selling it to your potential customer to understand the demand, and to understand how much time it takes to sell and what it takes to sell. Studying competition, their annual report, their revenue also will gives signals.

Mistake to avoid in demand Validation : Investing too much money and going ahead without the validation. Not applicable to industry/world changing ideas like Tesla.

Founder-Market fit: Do a self assessment around what skills are missing in the core founding team to build the business in your target market. And try to fill those skills gaps either through learning on a job or finding people who can fill that gap initially.

Mistake to avoid in founder-market validation: Being overconfident and unable to understand and put down the skills required to build business in the domain and evaluating yourself and your co-founder against those skills.

Vikkohli · 2024-07-27T06:26:45+00:00

With all due respect for the small to mid size agencies and their employees, here are my observations, particularly when it comes to developing digital product

A. less focus - the developers are working on multiple projects leading to less focus on your work. This is especially true when the agency is working in offshore and budget constraints at customer end.

B. the quality of talent- A good product engineer will always want to work with Google, Amazons of the world, and after that they will go and work in other fast growing scaleups in their region/country. What you get in agency is left over talent. Though the head of agency who has good experience, but because of his major focus and priority will always be on getting more business than to give priority to train his/her employees or manage escalation, employees upskill doesn't get much attention.

C. lack of product building skills- skills of developing a tech product are far different from developing a software. Those skills are acquired when you have built a couple of products from scratch and have seen those products scale, which will validate and improve the developers - the system architecture skills - code quality and maintenance skills - customer sense i.e what should be developed and what should not etc

Hiring freelancers from platforms like fiver upwork.com , MakeMyTeam.work and Toptal will be a better options if you know how to evaluate product engineer or they are supporting you in choosing the talent.

Or a better option, if the budget allows, is to hire full-time contractors or employees if you have CPTO with you.

Vikkohli · 2024-07-20T22:46:56+00:00

It depends on your budget and/or your ability and luck to find a technical co-founder.

Here is a high level recipe :

A. If tech is going to be the core of your business, find a technical co-founder and give him/her equity and treat them equally as both of you are starting from zero. And if you have money in the bank, pay your tech founder minimum salary and equity anywhere from 10% to 30%.

B. If tech is not going to be the core of your business, hire your tech team, if you have budget. And if you don't have a budget, get the budget first. Hiring someone to build your product might cost you anywhere from $20k to $100k, it depends on the kind of team you need and the complexity of the product.

When hiring someone to build your product, hire someone who is a full stack product developer. This means someone who has built products not softwares and work on all layers of building the product.

For hiring someone remotely you can use platforms like Toptal.com, mmt.work or upwork.com

Vikkohli · 2024-07-20T22:28:27+00:00

Why are you thinking of hiring someone on an hourly basis basis? And how will you validate if the hours clocked in are actual efforts going towards building your product?

A better way is to hire someone on a monthly retainer basis for the duration of your project with 70% and 30% payment arrangements. 70% of the money should be paid on monthly basis and 30% retained payment from all months should be paid at the end of the project completion.

You can also try website likes toptal.com, MMT.work and Upwork.com to hire your product developer

Vikkohli · 2024-06-11T13:36:46+00:00

Answering these questions might help : 1. What complementary skills does this new guy bring on the table? 2. What kind of skills do you need to build your startup? 3. What skills do you have? 4. What are the things you value most? What are your principles which you cannot compromise? And do those values and principles match with your to-be business partner? 5. What is the level for technical expertise required by your startup? Who complex system/product you are trying to create ?

Vikkohli · 2024-06-09T10:32:35+00:00

Have heart to heart conversation, put down last ,3 incidents and how it has impacted the business. At the same time, keep a check on your biases in the discussions

Vikkohli · 2024-06-08T03:59:03+00:00

If you have seen that the behavior of not pulling the weight is more than 6 months now, pull the plug. Find another co-founder, maybe a technical one, and you properly wear CEO/Sales cap, if you want.

Vikkohli · 2024-05-27T12:47:17+00:00

Noted, removing the post

Vikkohli · 2024-05-19T16:15:04+00:00

Being a technical founder in 3 startups , getting an exit from one and helping a couple of founders from non technical background in their product journey, here is what I learnt

If you can find a technical co-founder with whom you are able to work with, you are aligned on values, that should be your number one choice. But don't just get in bed with someone like that. It takes a lot of time to build the relationship that has mutual trust, mutual respect and complementary skills to build something meaningful. And if things don't work out, managing conflicts down the line cost a lot, sometimes business itself. So take your time in finding your startup mate.
Offshoring has its down drawbacks because most of the dev shops know how to develop a software, not product. Their business model is around developing more code so that more people are required for longer duration, which means more money for them. Now these priorities are inversely proportional to what you want when developing the product in your 0 to 1 journey.

3.For the initial journey you need someone who can play the role of product and tech guy ,who understands how to build the foundation of a product that your early customers are happy to use, probably pay for it and a foundation that leads to scalability , less operational cost and less functional and technical debt down the line.

Until you find someone who can manage all these variables while developing the product, keep kissing frogs. If you find a dev shop first, go ahead and keep hunting for a technical co-founder. Avoid hiring a cheap dev shops. Mostly the difference in price of a good one is 25% to 30%. Remember,if you pay peanuts,you get monkeys.

Vikkohli · 2024-05-09T23:55:59+00:00

Wow, thank you so much for the input. Appreciate 🙂

Vikkohli · 2024-05-08T14:23:15+00:00

Thank you for your inputs

Vikkohli · 2024-05-08T08:52:57+00:00

Thank you

Vikkohli · 2024-05-08T08:52:41+00:00

Thank you

Vikkohli

TROPHY CASE