I’m not here to discount bargain hunters. Sometimes you can get a good deal on something. I’m a car guy, so keeping an eye out for inexpensive parts is part of my DNA. But the one lesson I’ve learned over ten years of hunting for parts is that there’s a huge difference between discount and cheap. Discounts happen when supply is greater than demand. On the other hand, a cheap part is built cheaply, which means I’m going to face one of two realities:

Usually both of these realities will come true, and in the end I’ll have paid twice as much as I would have in both time and money than if I’d just bought the properly factory part in the first place.

This is exactly the same story with software development. If something is cheap, the chances are it’s not going to work perfectly, and when you’re starting your business there’s no room for “works less than perfectly”.

One of the most common stories I hear from entrepreneurs is that they found a development shop (usually in Eastern Europe or India) with an hourly rate of $25 — $40 an hour. That’s well below our hourly developer rate and at $25 an hour the entrepreneur really has no reason not to at least try it, right? The worst that can happen is that the result is an application that either works or looks a little less than perfect, right?

But exactly like the cheap part, that’s never the worst possibility. If it was then maybe a little extra time and a little extra money could fix things.

Unfortunately, the reason I’m hearing these stories is because that’s far from right and often entrepreneurs are left holding the bag with a product that is not only unfinished, but is unfinishable in its current state. Whether that’s due to problems in code hygiene, or incomplete workflows is beside the point. They’ve often spent the majority of their budget (sometimes more than their budget and almost always more than we would have estimated) and are behind on their timeline as well.

Getting things back on track is difficult, but doable. In fact “founder PTSD” is something that we specialize in at Tanooki.

Using a modified version of our Sprint Zero program we can get into development quickly, whether that means cleaning up existing code, or starting from the ground up again. Our process provides complete transparency for our entrepreneurs and for those who were left holding the bag from “cheap” developers we make sure there’s no ambiguity in any of the decisions.

While this has helped to salvage many a product, it’s a shame that the project needed salvaging in the first place. Even though a professional development team may seem expensive by the hour, over the life of your business it will be much, much better than cheap.

What do you want to build?