Startups are disruptive. They make the lives of customers easy by offering unique solutions cheaper and faster. The easy availability of equity funds empowers founders to do this better than ever.
However, the availability of money is not empowering if the founder doesn’t spend it judiciously. So many founders start building a tech team very early in their journey, which has inherent dangers in the long run.
In this blog, we will tell you how you can achieve your business goals without building a tech team, especially in the early stages of the startup.
The most important thing you need to know is the foundation of your business is your idea, not how perfect the product would look in the hands of the customer.
It is the idea that will make you money in the long run. It's also what will set you apart from your competitors.
Therefore, in the early stage, it is pertinent for you to concentrate on ascertaining the feasibility of your idea, and for this, you should take the minimalist approach - spending on essentials only.
Building a tech team is not as easy as you think. First of all, hiring software engineers cost a lot. You need to offer good salaries to hire the best people and this may be difficult for startups with limited budgets.
The average salary for a software developer in the US is about $100,000 per year and that number goes up when you add benefits like health care and other expenses associated with running a business like medical insurance or provident fund. In India, the cost of building a tech team runs into more than 50-70% of the overall budget of startups depending on the nature of their business.
Talent crunch making things worse
In the past, it was easy to find talent — but now, with the rising demand in the technology space, it's getting harder and harder. Blame it on ‘The Great Resignation’, there are simply not enough developers to go around.
The problem is even worse for smaller startups that don't have the resources to hire their own full-time team of developers.
You may be wondering if you don’t hire a tech team, how are you going to bring your idea to life? There are ways to test your idea without building an app, and they're not just for internal use.
You can use a website or landing page to test your idea with users; these are essentially digital brochures that host information about your product or service.
If there's one thing we've learned from startups over the years, it is that no one likes being sold on a product unless they already know about it.
By giving users access to some basic information about what you're trying to sell them, you'll be able to gauge their interest in what you're offering before investing too much time into developing an app.
You can actually show what your vision looks like, through a mockup. A mockup is essentially a digital drawing or diagram of how you want your final product to look and function.
With mockups, you can start testing out your idea with potential customers before even writing any code! How cool is that?
This method is known as “lean startup” and can be used by startups to test their ideas before building them into working apps.
You can use a no-code platform. It allows you to see what your app would look like without writing a single line of code. No-code platforms are becoming increasingly popular, and they can create applications that have been designed by professionals with the best practices in mind. This means that they will work well with smartphones and other devices. It also allows you to update the apps in line with the growth of your business.
There are many. In fact, the idea behind the no-code revolution is to reduce the cost of product development. Here's a list of the most popular no-code platforms for different functions of a startup:
Conclusion
Building a tech team is expensive, especially if the management of the startup isn't aware of expenditure. Furthermore, building a team can delay the product development process from which no one benefits.
But there is an alternative route. Using mockups or building a product on no-code platforms makes your startup efficient and quick, and after using them for a year, you can evaluate your requirements to upgrade to a full tech stack if required.
No-code platforms like Hubler can enable you to get started on your idea and test it with potential customers without investing heavily in a tech team right away. If you want to explore our solutions, book a demo here.
