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From time to time, we come across a situation where we desperately need the assistance of a technology partner. Be it a broken iPhone that you accidentally tested for hoaxed prank hacks or an urgent task for developing a unique piece of application. Pretty much everything that we use is completely digitized by various technical cofounders. That is why every young entrepreneur is greedily trying to build his own child. However, when they stumble with the development for the first time, they are knocking their head with the following question: “How do I find a good technology startup partner and not regret it?”
Intro
It’s a good idea to start collaborating with a trustful technical partner, especially when you have little to absolutely no expertise in the development domain. By combining the efforts of both the business-wise person and a software developer you can come up with some unique and innovative product while delivering a working business model. However, the market expectations of your potential audience are really at the stake here, since every day lots of breakthroughs are done, so you have to be both fast and explicit.
The main question here is obviously: “Which one to choose?”, since if chosen incorrectly your whole project would become a blast. You bite the bullet and see how your app is constantly crashing. Your dev team is completely silent and your customers are slowly turning sides. The last thing you ever want to see on this list is when your investors will roll back their loans or venture capitals. That’s why things can go bad fast and if you want to prevent it, you should know who is going to build your project. And while it is true that your product is like a central core of your business, it is done to solve the customer pain points. Overall, the consequences may be a complete disaster that you don’t want to happen.
On the other hand, if by analyzing the list of potential developers, you can make the most of it. Not only will a reliable technical partner support the development from start to end, but also manage other developers.
Without further ado, we present a list of criteria that every startup and company owner should take note of while looking for a technology partner.
Criteria for choosing a technology startup partner
References
There is no doubt that the very first thing you want to do is check the company’s official references. You can either view them on special platforms or request documented project examples or a list of successful stories.
For us, we stick to providing quality-based success stories on our online resources and during the first contact with a potential client, we are glad to provide access to them. If you want to learn more insights into our success stories you can actually head to our official blog and UK platform. If you’d like to know what kind of expertise we have in different business industries, you can head directly to our official website. And specifically for young entrepreneurs, we have created a Design and Discovery page for the proper initiation of a project development plan.
Once you’ve seen them, don’t be shy and approach the company’s customers. Ask them all of the questions that you might have in mind. For example: “How good was the communication between the client and the project manager?” or “How fast and productively the company completed his work?” Ask as much as you can before preparing for the meeting with your partner. Perhaps they might not have the same field of expertise that your project does. However, if there is a good number of references that are filled with satisfied customers, it is a great sign of a trustful technology startup partner.
On the other hand, do ask your partner about the negative side of their cooperation.
“What went wrong during the project execution?”
“How much impact did it do on the development progress?”
“How exactly did your partner manage it and overcome it?”
All of that is completely relevant and can be also applied to you. Since not every project is going on a straight road to success. There are cases where something unexpected or unpredictable has happened. Therefore, understanding how exactly the technical partner is dealing and solving all of the potential project mess is also another criteria to look at.
Another thing to note is to know just for how long the company has been operating. It is another factor that will show just how dedicated and loyal this partner is compared to other ones.
Expertise
The next point on the list is the actual expertise of the potential technical partner. Even though you already read the references and listened to their ex-clients, it is drastically important to be 100% sure that they do have experience in what they claim to be. Since the job of the outsource companies is to bring their client closer to a successful business. The ones who have produced more successful projects in a good number of years are the most prominent.
For example, whenever we get a contact link with a potential client, we already assess it and think: “What kind of value can we actually give to the client?”. Once we get to know each other, our business analysts will propose a whole branch of suitable solutions for his idea. If he accepts, our Dev team will start executing tasks and requirements according to the identified success factors.
A professional partner will assist in utilizing all of the trending tech stacks while guiding you through your project. This includes implementing each feature rationally and consequently. While applying business logic to the relevant goals and achieving the maximum value for each development iteration.
Product Future
An iron characteristic of a technical partner is to provide several options for the development plan initiation. Be it different technology stacks or paths of slowly releasing the product to the market. The important key point from here is that a partner has to offer variations, to fit your requirements. But keep in mind that as the businesses are growing, so do the products that they release. That’s why a technology startup partner who can foresee all these change waves may appear before you, only once in a blue moon.
In JetRuby’s case, our team proposes the best methods that are both trending and demanding in your market niche. Once chosen and all of the uncertainties are thoroughly discussed, our business analysts will go ahead and prepare an estimation of the product development directions. When the project finishes, we show them a proposed trajectory of further development and assistance. And depending on the client’s answer, we take action accordingly. If you want to read more about the importance of business analytics, follow our article here.
Another thing is to keep in mind that you are looking for a custom app solution, not a jack-in-the-box. Since you are working on a long-term basis, putting effort and money into it.
Transparency
Whether you do have experience in software development or not, make sure that your future partner is always transparent about what he is doing and can easily explain it. He and his team have to walk in sync with the business goals and requirements you had in mind. At the same time, a technical specialist should always notify regarding any changes or development progresses he had, along with providing access to the necessary documentation and some of the tools.
To have a more accurate estimate of the business goals and requirements, assemble the prototype, set clear deadlines, and implementation steps, one should conduct a Design and Discovery Phase. It is a JetRuby’s program that can guarantee to you that the risks of your business failure will decrease by almost 80%. After it, you will have confidence in what is your market niche, what are your current and future goals, and more concrete data for your project.
If you want to have direct access to the project development steps, JetRuby advises to look out for Agile or Scrumban methodologies. In both, all tasks will be done in priority, with a visual representation of each finished one.
In most cases, whenever the project implementation is going through previously mentioned methodologies, various sorts of documents are generated. The ones that are truly important and can definitely guarantee you the project status are:
- Sprint Report – basically a document that records all of the encountered issues in each sprint, a feature list that either was or was not completed during the indicated sprint and a comparison between the estimated efforts to the spent ones.
- Sprint Commitment – while the first document focuses on sprint results, this one contains the goals of a sprint, estimated dates of sprint start and end, total duration, the list of features in the current sprint, and team information.
- Project Report – a final document with a fully detailed explanation of each feature implemented and project results.
Where can I find good technical cofounder?
For various reasons, people tend to use only 2 known options in finding a partner: send a mailing for every contact and utilize the most popular social platforms. The last one is designed for hiring a broad variety of minds (like LinkedIn, Monster.com, Indeed.com, etc).
“So what if I do?” – you might ask.
Well, it’s not a bad thing honestly. But to find a qualified and experienced technology startup partner, you might visit specific platforms. One of the best examples is Clutch – an excellent resource for finding partners. It records phone interviews of various company owners and based on them creates reviews for each one of them. Now that is pretty awesome!
While Clutch is a slick platform, there are plenty of others to consider. Some contain the most trustworthy and popular website platforms that can assist you in finding great technical partners. Others, have people who are looking to fill the role of co-founder if you would require any.
Here are some of that example, which you can use:
Angel.co
Why go outsource, rather than freelance?
You might actually want to hold your arguments back away for a few moments right now. We truly understand that freelancers also have stand-in project implementations. And in some cases, freelancers can actually give you a slight boost in the production of your product. However, it is not always the best way to let the freelancers do all of the startup work.
Even when it comes to our internal company business matters, we do not use nor recommend using freelancer’s assistance. It may sound like a good idea to have an independent worker for some specific project. However, there is more to it and most of it is being missed out. Based on our own observations, the majority of the companies who used freelancers help have a tragic story to tell. As most of the freelancers will either not support their process of work or simply abandon the requiruter since the company didn’t legally hire him. But once again this is just the tip of an iceberg, the real tough adventure is just beginning.
If you decide to walk on the freelancer’s path, you will have to put up a lot of work. For the most part, the main person in charge of an app will be responsible for preparing its architecture. He also should have experience with managing the freelance team, while allocating the required resources. Since it’s pretty much impossible to do it as a single man army. This means they all have to choose the correct technical stack and put up some core business foundation logic for your project.
But wait, here’s more!
As you might know, a freelance is typically a person who is typically involved in multiple projects at once. Thus, it is in his interest to finish the digital product, hit all of the requirements, and quit your project. Meaning no further supports or scaling on the app you just created.
So, you will have to actually assess all of the freelance developers. And be completely sure that yours is the chosen one. And once decided, you will have to keep on observing that your development process is moving in the correct direction. More than that, your freelancer has to provide you with a high-quality result, achieved in the arranged deadlines.
If you still don’t believe what we just told you, then in that case there is one definite thing. You will have to spend more time observing, managing, and communicating with your freelance team. While you get to spend lesser and lesser time with other sights of your growing startup.
On the other hand, if you are not confident in challenging the freelance pool of mess, you can easily try to ask for assistance from the outsourcing companies.
From them, you will see how they can provide, give, and assist you in more ways than a freelancer can. Since you’ll be granted access to multiple resources and platforms, accompanied by the right experts interested in making a successful product.
As we’d like to say at JetRuby: “It doesn’t matter what are the roles, what matters is the cooperation and valuable results”. Our experts have 10 years of working in various market segments, constantly enhancing our client’s projects. They don’t give up or get bored with doing the same project. You actually have it backward. They look at how a given digital solution can operate more efficiently, generate more unique features, and improve the encountered bugs.
In short, cooperation with a technology startup partner will definitely get you on the right track. You can say that they can show you a whole new world, from the startup’s perspectives. And of course, by sharing all knowledge and expertise, suitable for your specific business field.
Besides, you don’t need to manage the Dev team all by yourself. It will be already under the control of your partner. They will also scale it accordingly or you can do it by yourself.
After all, most of the partners who are actively helping startups were a startup once too. They can help you with questions, uncertainties, development, and project planning with no issues. While giving you an extra slice of experience that you can apply for your case too!
Conclusion
Be it a great company name or an excellent product, everyone is competing for leaving a big gap in this world. And it’s always not that easy when it comes to practice. Since your technology startup partner can actually put up a good strategic plan and develop a solid and secure app. However, by the time you’ll release it, either an analog will be already on the market or it won’t be that valuable.
That’s why it is important to have a reliable technology partner and a business analyst at the same time. Every professional specialist is in high demand and trying to get one will be a rat race.
That’s why our JetRuby team is always out there for those who desire their product to become a successful one. It can be both for the big company fellas and for the young startup ones. For this reason, we developed a special program to prepare your product for an MVP stage.
All of both technical and business uncertainties will be clarified, while your idea will slowly become a real one. So, go ahead and check out our Design and Discovery phase, in the meantime let us know your thoughts or stories regarding the choice of the right technical partner. Until that time, stay positive and keep up the good work!
