Has anyone hired a freelance developer for a MVP?

I've been on the opposite side of this, as either a firm working with early-stage companies or as a freelance developer. Biggest issues I saw were "entrepreneurs" with really unrealistic expectations. They had a very "build-it-and-they-will-come" viewpoint, and seldom had the budget or the marketing abilities to make anything happen. And of course they want a five-year product roadmap all built by a single developer and done tomorrow. They are generally taken in by whomever has the lowest cost and will promise them the most. They reneg on every agreement, delay payments, treat the developers like they are disposable, and then act surprised when they get ghosted.

So to answer your question: Actually, there's lots of good talent out there in the world, often affordably. But you have to do your upfront due-diligence not in the form of endless reference checks and technical quiz BS, but in the "can I work with this person?" type checks. Because you need to be able to work together and communicate, and stick to a plan together. And, you need to be realistic about how much you are asking them to do, wrt to time and budget. Remote absolutely can work, but chances are there are also people local to you who have the talent needed. You don't need to be ex-FAANG to be good / good enough to get the job done. And, given that you are going to be reliant on this person, find someone you respect and treat them with respect.

The hard thing is an mvp is less about product management and more about wading through the chaos of feedback from early customers to find the product patterns to manage.

To that extent, finding someone who can build an mvp to be a flexible learning engine for finding product market fit in a particular industry is really important.

It's not good enough to build something once, but to be able to update it over and over again easily to maintain your speed of learning.

Yes, but only for small parts of the project, not the entire MVP. It's common to engage freelancers to fill in the gaps and accelerate schedules.

However, it's usually not a good idea to outsource your entire core technology development to freelancers. Building, launching, running, and maintaining a technology product is far more expensive than most non-tech people estimate. You would need very deep pockets to commit to outsourcing the entire development.

If you're trying to raise investment money, the process will likely grind to a halt when your investors realize you don't have any in-house technology people.

I've hired a number through upwork, and once from someone who advertised on here.

Through upwork it can be hit and miss, I found the best method was to set a couple of questions in the description of the task for people to answer ie "start you response with the phrase gosling was off his rocker" & something like "explain the tech you would use to build mvp and why". That tended to weed out the people who were mass bidding on tasks without reading, you want someone who's read your task and thought about it a little.

For bigger tasks, I've had success with posting the full job details but then setting a small task, like wireframes or some design work for say $50 to a couple of upworkers, then picking one to carry on the rest of the work. That worked really well, and spending $200 on selecting a freelancer when spending $5000 felt like a good payoff.

The person on here I hired after he posted an offer to make an mvp for a fixed price, and it worked out really well, delightful Chap, good work.

I've tried fiverr, but that seems better for smaller tasks.

I have the same question.

I've tried working with UpWork, but their developers seem more geared towards "known"-type of projects, involving specific tech, or specific type of jobs, or fix it jobs.

I presented a project of some advanced JS, nothing too serious, and almost every developer declined or couldn't understand the requirements, likely because they didn't read any of my material about the project.

The job is pretty simple: add support for https://play.Presenta.cc .json files to https://github.com/pseudosavant/player.html#playerhtml. I want to be able to have a Presenta File player, so I can play the Presenta slideshow files and video files from my local folder using the html page. That's generally it. Upwork couldn't deliver.

This job was step one, in a very few number towards an MVP.

Nobody on Upwork seems to be able to do this.

I'm pretty disappointed with UpWork. I have a call with TopTal next week I have a call with Iron Forge next week, as well

If anyone here has reviewed this, is able to do this, and want to get paid doing it, leave me a message.

Thx

Legend goes that NoRedInk (https://www.noredink.com/) was originally built by freelance RoR developers from CraigsList. Now they employ Evan Czaplicki, the creator of Elm and have a staff of dozens of software engineers.

Kind of, i built a lot myself but since I’m not a developer I needed to outsource building an actual application (I had ported a sort of MVP to a platform but the limitations were too great). I hired through upwork and it’s approaching completion, a few weeks behind but with relatively few tradeoffs and I understand, in hindsight, why it became more complex than me and the developer had anticipated. He showed me some code and a few behind the scenes stuff so I think it’s likely going OK and I’ve erred on the side of good faith by releasing milestones payments but I guess within 10 days or so will be the final verdict.

The project is a multiplayer card-based games with complex rules and custom assets.(intrapreneurs-game.com)

Ha, very interesting. I am on the boat of offering my services for MVP building.

As previous entrepreneur with some failed startups and heavy software experience, I've realised my skills are well needed in the market.

I think hardest part here is that clients for MVP has very high expectations and very little money for it. And the whole balance part falls apart.

Besides that - I really enjoy it. It's amazing to work on different ideas constantly.

I’ve hooked a dear friend of mine up with several build folks an mvp gigs. All the ones that actually could pay him properly later went on to have some pretty great exits or larger than expected fund raising rounds. Do wish he benefited more from their later success though.

I've considered hiring a front-end designer / programmer. To be frank, hiring a designer and then applying my halfwit front-end skills seems like a waste of $3-4k - if anyone has a better way to go about solving this with reputable freelancers I'm all ears!

I would advise looking for free lancers who have build their own products either a side project or a startup that failed/succeded. This will make your life easier.

And when you hire them, try to treat them as partners and involve them in decision making.

I would like to ask where to find those MVP gigs? I've built a few MVPs in the past for my old clients but I find it very difficult to find MVP gigs repeatedly.

To OP: feel free to drop me a message if you need my help (email in profile)

My firm provides these services. Feel free to get in touch.