Should You Hire a Software Engineer to Build Your MVP or Do It Yourself?

Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a crucial step in a startup or indie hacker’s journey. It allows you to validate your idea with a functional, minimal product before investing significant resources in the project.

However, many founders face a common dilemma: should they hire a software engineer or build the MVP themselves? This article will help you decide which approach is best for your situation.

Understanding MVPs

An MVP is a stripped-down version of your product that includes only the essential features needed to test your idea with early users. The goal is to quickly validate your idea’s viability and gather feedback without spending too much time or money.

An MVP helps you understand whether there is a market demand for your product and provides insights for future development.

Benefits of Hiring a Software Engineer

There are several benefits to hiring a software engineer to build your MVP for you. Here are a few of them:

Expertise and Experience

Developers with years of experience in the tech industry understand engineering best practices, can write clean and maintainable code, and are familiar with various technologies and frameworks. They can also help you identify whether your idea is technically feasible and help estimate expenses for ideas that are technically feasible.

For example, you may or may not remember that in 2023 Reddit changed their API. This resulted in dramatically higher costs for startups and companies that utilized the Reddit API. Costs rose so much that applications like Reddit is Fun (RIF) estimated their new annual costs would be in the ballpark of 20 million dollars per year.

Trustworthy developers will be transparent with you about potential costs that may arise from different web hosting, APIs, cloud services, etc. They’ll also help you choose the most cost efficient solutions based on your business goals.

A good developer isn’t a code monkey, they’re a technical business partner.

Quality and Reliability

Hiring a software engineer can lead to higher quality code and fewer bugs. Experienced developers can anticipate potential issues and proactively address them, ensuring a more stable and reliable MVP.

They can also anticipate potential UI/UX issues and help you strike the right balance between fixing major issues and minimizing costs and time to market.

Time Efficiency

A skilled developer can speed up the development process, allowing you to launch your MVP faster. This enables you to focus on other aspects of your business, such as marketing and customer acquisition.

Scalability

Experienced engineers can build scalable and maintainable systems from the start, which is crucial if your product gains traction quickly. This foresight can save you time and money in the long run.

Benefits of Building an MVP Yourself

Cost Savings

One of the most significant advantages of building your MVP yourself is the cost savings. Hiring a software engineer can be expensive, especially for bootstrapped startups. By doing it yourself, you can allocate those funds to other critical areas of your business.

Learning Opportunity

Building your MVP is an excellent learning opportunity. You’ll gain valuable technical skills and a deeper understanding of your product. This knowledge can be beneficial when communicating with developers and stakeholders in the future.

Full Control

When you build your MVP, you have complete control over the product. You can choose the tech stack, choose which features get prioritized, etc.

Key Considerations for Making Your Decision

Technical Skills

Assess your current technical abilities and willingness to learn. If you have a solid understanding of coding and feel confident in your skills, building the MVP yourself could be feasible.

Project Complexity

Evaluate the complexity of your MVP. If it requires specialized knowledge or involves complex features, hiring a software engineer might be the better option.

Time Constraints

Consider your available time and how it impacts the speed of development. If you’re busy with other activities you may not be able to allocate the time and energy needed to “get your elbows in the mud” and code everything up yourself. Plus if you need to launch quickly, hiring a developer can expedite the process.

Budget

Analyze your financial resources. If you have the budget to hire a developer, it might be worth the investment. If you don’t have any financial resources to allocate towards the technical half of the project, then hiring someone isn’t even within the realm of consideration and you probably wouldn’t even be reading this article :)

Long-term Vision

Think about the long-term vision for your product. The decision to hire or build yourself might affect future development and maintenance.

We’ve all heard countless stories of applications with awful code quality and huge amounts of technical debt. If an application’s code is poorly written, over time adding new features on top of a shaky foundation gets more and more difficult.

In less than a year it’s common for an application to get so bad that it’s easier for your technical team to start from scratch and rewrite the app than it would be to continue to add more code to the existing app.

No-Code/Low-Code Tools

No-code and low-code tools offer a middle ground. These platforms allow you to build an MVP without deep technical knowledge. Tools like Bubble, Webflow, and Glide can help you create functional prototypes quickly.

While building an MVP yourself using these tools can help you minimize costs and give you a greater sense of control over your project, these tools aren’t without their flaws.

Cons of No-Code/Low-Code Tools

Limited Customization

No-code and low-code tools can be restrictive in terms of customization. They offer a set of predefined templates and functionalities, which might not fully align with your unique vision or requirements. These limitations can quickly become apparent and challenging to work around.

Scalability Issues

While no-code/low-code tools are excellent for rapid prototyping, they may not handle scalability well. As your user base grows and your product becomes more complex, these platforms might struggle to support increased demands, potentially leading to performance bottlenecks.

Vendor Lock-In

Relying on a no-code/low-code platform can result in vendor lock-in. Migrating your application to a different platform or transitioning to custom code later can be difficult and time-consuming, potentially leading to higher costs and technical debt.

Security Concerns

Security is a critical consideration for any application. No-code/low-code platforms may not provide the same level of security as custom-built solutions. Limited control over the underlying code and infrastructure can expose your product to vulnerabilities and compliance issues.

Technical Debt

Using no-code/low-code tools can lead to technical debt. As you build more features on these platforms, you might encounter limitations that require custom solutions or workarounds. Over time, this can result in a messy and hard-to-maintain codebase.

Performance Limitations

Applications built with no-code/low-code tools may face performance limitations due to the abstraction layers these platforms use. Optimizing performance and achieving the desired level of responsiveness can be challenging, especially for resource-intensive applications.

Difficulty Hiring Help & Decreased Productivity

Most developers dislike working with no-code/low-code tools. If you build your initial MVP with one of these tools most developers won’t want to work on your project.

There’s also the issue that most developers have much more experience building and maintaining custom solutions vs working with low-code/no-code tools.

As a result, even if you find a developer that’s willing to work on your low-code/no-code application, there’s a good chance they won’t be able to work on it as efficiently as if it was built using technologies they better understand like React or Next.js.

This unfortunately means that said developer will have to bill you more hours and/or take longer to finish your project.

In the US the average software engineer earns a median salary of roughly $130,000/year plus benefits according to talent.com. Other sources like levels.fyi put the average annual total compensation for US software engineers as high as $180,000.

This means conservatively you need to budget roughly $80-$90/hour for an ‘average’ developer if you’re just paying cash without benefits for part-time or temporary contract work.

As you can see, any losses in productivity can quickly add up to a HUGE amount of money.

Conclusion

Deciding whether to hire a software engineer or build your MVP yourself depends on various factors, including your technical skills, project complexity, time constraints, budget, and long-term vision. Both approaches have their pros and cons, and the right choice will depend on your unique circumstances.

Our Recommendation

If possible, try to test the demand for your product before building it. Reach out to your audience or potential customers and see if what you’re considering building is something they’d actually be interested in.

If you’re so inclined, consider using a low-code/no-code tool to try to build a landing page for your product.

Pieter Levels (a famous indie hacker that’s built dozens of startups) suggests informing potential customers of the benefits they’d receive by using your product, and trying to sell the product to your customers as if it already exists.

If you see a lot of users click the buy button, it’s a solid indication that there may be sufficient demand for your product to be a success.

You can simply tell your visitors after they click the buy button that you were simply testing demand for the product, and that if they like they can sign up to your email list for an announcement when the product is released (and give them a discount to build goodwill because they helped you validate demand for the product).

While this suggestion could potentially lower our sales, our goal is to be your business partner with a technical background. Our goal isn’t to sell you services you don’t need.

With that being said, if you do need an MVP then SwiftLaunch offers the best value for your money MVPs on the planet. If you’re interested please get in touch and we’d love to help you build an amazing MVP in 21 days or less.