Turning Your App Idea into Reality: A Non-Tech Guide with Igor Belagorudsky of FastCTO | Greatest Hits Replay - 164

While we've returned from a holiday pause, we're working behind the scenes to create a refreshed show, with new guests and exciting topics. In the meantime, enjoy one of our popular past episodes. Perhaps this is the year to take the plunge and create that app!

You’re not a developer, but you have an innovative idea for a software or maybe a mobile app, now what? How can a non-techie turn a great idea into a viable product without blowing your budget? That’s exactly what Lori Vajda and Nola Boea wanted to know so they sat down with Igor Belagorudsky, Founder and President of Fast CTO. Igor and his team started the company to help people and companies with great software ideas get them built the right way, the first time around.

In this "Greatest Hits" episode, Igor shares his experience, insights and tips so listeners can learn what you need to know about hiring developers, why you don’t want an SOW (statement of work), and how to build a successful tech company.

Thanks for Listening!

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Business success strategies are in the works. Come have a listen!

In This Episode You’ll Learn

• Why a poorly executed mobile app or software idea can quickly become a huge bank debt and how you can avoid it.
• The make-or-break steps for finding and hiring the right developer partner to successfully build your app.
• The risky mistake first time startup founders make when coming up with an idea for an app. 
• The 3 reasons you need to treat your app like a business.

Key points Lori and Nola are sharing in this episode:

(5:16.46) While the process of building an app seems pretty straightforward, this one costly mistake often leads non-tech founders to hire the wrong team of developers and programmers. 

(7:48.17) The three primary reasons non-tech entrepreneurs should be wary about signing an SOW and why it usually doesn’t help with getting your idea built.

(11:10.90) Why you don’t want to hire a dev shop that offers project management for free. 

(14:20:20) Before hiring anyone, this is the first thing you should do when considering if your app is worth developing.

(17:12:28) The three main pros and cons of hiring a freelance software developer and hiring a company such as a dev shop.

(19:27:22) The surprising answer to determine whether or not you can tell if a developer is trying to scam you.

Resources 

You can subscribe to Lori and Nola's show, (we love you and want to make it easy) on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Fast CTO

Email address: igor@fastcto.com

Connect with angel Investor and CEO, Igor Belagorudsky -  Social Links:

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/igorbelagorudsky/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lookattheigor/?hl=en 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fastcto 

To Get Igor’s two recipes and quote: Sticky Brand Lab Resource Page

Transcript

Nola: 0:00

You have an idea for an app or possibly a business software solution. Sounds exciting, right? Not to mention the friends and family who agree this is a great idea. There's only one tiny problem You're not a developer. So what do you do? How do you develop your amazing idea into an app or software? Well, stay tuned, because we're addressing all this and more with a Chief Technology Officer and Subject Matter Expert in today's episode.

Lori: 0:29

You're listening to the Sticky Brand Lab Podcast, where time-strapped professionals like you learn how to create a business you love in as little as three hours a week. Is it possible to create an app, start a SaaS company or launch a startup without a tech background? And if it is possible, what does it take for a non-techie, entrepreneur-minded individual to turn her great idea into a viable product or business? We wondered. So we set out to find out and one thing we learned along the way it starts with finding the best people to help you see your vision through. Hello and welcome aspiring entrepreneurs.

Lori: 1:10

Lori Annola here with a decidedly non-tech, savvy approach to getting your app or software solution idea on the path to development. But before we get this, everything you need to know about turning your idea into an app or software solution. But we're too embarrassed to ask. Show started. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcast, google Podcasts, audible, spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. That way, you'll never miss out on any of our weekly helpful, informative and always opinionated podcasts. Now let's get this. Say yes to built by a non-techie founder. Show started.

Nola: 1:52

You are likely familiar with the following tech companies Airbnb, Tinder, Pandora and Apple but what you might not be familiar with is that these companies were built by non-tech founders. That's right. Airbnb founders had industrial designing backgrounds, Pinterest founders were educators, and Michael Dell was doing trade and stocks before he started Dell. For non-techie people, ourselves included, technology lingo is a foreign language, and when you don't speak the language, it's understandable to feel embarrassed, intimidated and anxious the moment someone talks to you using terms you know nothing about. So we set out to find a technology expert who specializes in working with novices. Just like most of us, we wanted someone who could help us understand exactly what our audience needs to know in order to turn their idea into a viable product. Angel, Investor, Mentor, Advisor and Consultant. Igor Belogrutsky is founder and CEO of Fast CTO, a company dedicated to helping people and companies with great ideas get them built the right way the first time around. Or, said another way, you are technology evangelist, software architect and thingy explainer. Welcome, Igor.

Lori: 3:10

Hello, hi. So before we get into the specifics of how non-tech new entrepreneurs can go about creating an app or a software solution, can you tell us what is the most entrepreneurial thing about you?

Igor: 3:26

Well, so the most entrepreneurial thing depending on how you define entrepreneurial or thing, I suppose. So a good entrepreneur, I think, has to be able to stand up after failing. In that way, I failed quite a bunch, and so I think the entrepreneurial thing is that you stand up and you try again.

Nola: 3:48

I like that. Well, they say, there is no such thing as failure, only lessons learned.

Igor: 3:54

Or failing forward.

Nola: 3:56

Yeah, fast. Cto is a pretty unique company. For one thing, your company does very little in the way of actually building websites and apps. In fact, you're more about helping people with ideas find the right people to bring those ideas to fruition. Tell us about what your company does and what led you to start it. That's a great question.

Igor: 4:17

I've had a lot of startup and I don't think I've had a single startup that was the same industry as a startup before or earlier in my career. Basically, you look for a fun project and you don't really think about building on the previous thing and going forward. So I had failure after failure after failure, a couple of minor successes, and then I ended up back in Boston after being in San Francisco for a bit and I found this company that was a group of a staffing company, right. So they basically did the whole thing that everybody does they disrupt the industry, all that kind of stuff in the staffing space. I started there as a first employee with two co-founders. It took nine years or so. We finally built it up, 120 people or so sold it, several rounds of institutional investment, the whole journey and I exited it.

Igor: 5:09

I learned a lot, but the number one thing I learned is that I don't like staffing. I can't. You know, the way I define staffing is you pay someone one thing, you build them out at 3x. That that's how you make your money. That's that Most of the world works that way. But what it really means for startups and entrepreneurs is that anytime they go to find people to build something for them.

Igor: 5:40

Instead of working with the people that they should be working with, they work with people they can afford, which are people at dev shops that are really getting paid three times less than what you're paying for them, and so what ends up happening is a lot of times and it's kind of the hypothesis that FASITIL is built on is that if you go and you Google, you know why do startups fail and you get back a million different results.

Igor: 6:05

When you put in a pie chart, 80% of that pie chart you could summarize as I spent too much money to build the wrong thing and now I'm out of money and there's like a lot of different ways you could walk into that statement, but at the end of it, you had some amount of money you tossed over the fence to some dev shop and, you know, two, three months later, you got nothing to show for. So basically, fasitil, the idea behind it, is, instead of doing that, bring along for the ride somebody that built a company very similar to yours already. They know exactly what the milestone should be and they can direct a team of developers on exactly what they need to do and how, and so if we take a CTO like that and we make them affordable. That's where the magic.

Lori: 6:53

I love that, that kind of piggybacks on a question that I want to tie in here, which is fast. Cto is more than just connecting the customer to the developer. Could you kind of help explain in giving it a better understanding, because it's not just about finding a developer. I mean, if you're talking 70K or you've got something, that's even less. It's not just developers that you are connecting people to. Are there?

Nola: 7:22

language barriers and trying to explain a concept that doesn't exist.

Igor: 7:27

Yeah. So let me answer Nolia's question in exactly the way that you need your question answered as well. The language barrier is not your speaking English and their speaking Korean. The language barrier is that you're speaking non-tech and they need to hear tech. The analogy I often use is building a house Right, so you can find the best contractor out there like really, really experienced, well-priced everything contractor and you could say, okay, I have this room, I need a window in this room. Without any other guidance, they're going to use their best judgment to put a window Right. They're going to pick a wall, they're going to pick a size, they're going to pick everything and at the end you're going to get a window and it's probably going to be well-installed right, because it's a good contractor. That's SOW, because on your SOW you're going to say I need a window, I need login, and you're leaving it to a developer to decide what that means. Right Now.

Igor: 8:25

Imagine if you gave a little bit more context. I need a window because I'm trying to grow some plants. Now you've got a contractor that says, okay, well, north is this way, west is this way, east is that way. You've got a hill over there. Best light is going to be if I put a window on this wall and then you put a window on the right wall, still their choice, still their size, right, whatever they pick, but at least it's on the right wall. Now let's say you say, well, I'm growing this specific type of plant. They're like well, for that kind of plant we need this kind of glass, because that kind of glass filters UV rays. And then you say, oh, and actually I've got kids and say, okay, well, now the window has to be like this, and actually I also want to put TV in here. Well, now the window has to have shades. And then just open and close, right.

Igor: 9:11

So the more information you give someone who's doing it, the better they're going to do at their job. And the problem is that and it doesn't it's not limited to non-tech founders. Most tech founders can't do this either. You don't know what the developer needs to hear to do the right thing. It's just unknowable because it changes every time. Even I get it wrong. Sometimes you have to explain things in such a specific way for each specific thing that you're trying to solve. That's a language barrier and that's where a CTO comes in like a real CTO that's done it before that can marry the business side and the tech side, and that's what we do.

Lori: 9:51

Cool, it almost sounds like you're a matchmaker, except that you don't leave.

Igor: 9:56

Yeah, yeah, okay, stay and hold hands. So, lori, to answer your questions, that CTO is decidedly not a dev shop. We don't sell developers, we don't sell development. But our mission in general is we don't profit off of startups Like Google us check us out, but I don't stand to make any money off of this, I only stand to save you money.

Nola: 10:21

Very cool.

Lori: 10:22

So is there anything that you wish non-tech people knew or considered before they invested their time and money in getting an app or a software developed?

Igor: 10:35

A lot.

Lori: 10:39

Could you narrow it down to a couple of the top ones?

Igor: 10:42

Yeah, I actually teach a class on this, called product development, for an accelerator called Founder Institute, and I'm happy to add a link to the deck I use. But basically, look, sows are bad. Developers speak a different language, both figuratively and actually. Sometimes, anytime you try to engage someone, that does a sort of thing where they put a barrier between you and the developers run the other way. So, like a lot of dev shops do this blended model where they say, well, our developers are in India, but you have a local project manager, product owner, you talk to them. They'll talk to the developers. Run the other way.

Igor: 11:22

So think about how real companies do it. That's why I always tell early stage founders A real CEO of an early stage company let's say, you have 10, 15, 20 developers, you know who they are. So if you don't know who your developers are, if you can't talk to them, you're starting off on the wrong foot. You don't want that. There's so much. Nothing is free. Any dev shop that says, oh, here's a blended rate, our project manager is free. What you really need is two developers, qa, devops and this and this and this, and let's try to build you a team, but you get free project management. It's not free, right? They're just packing it all up by building your team. You probably don't need Give me a second. I'll come back with more.

Lori: 12:07

I think that's always that kind of by the time people get to you, you could have saved them a lot of headache, but then they didn't know that you existed or some company like yours. Do you often consult with founders or people with ideas prior so that they really understand and educate themselves first, or do people usually find you because of some other means?

Igor: 12:33

Most of the time and this is a phrase I hear several times a day is where were you a year ago? So a lot of times it's that. However, more and more people are coming to us first. We work with a lot of universities and accelerators and just various programs, and more and more, when an entrepreneur talks to someone that knows the ecosystem and they say, hey, I want to build something, they say hey, before you do anything, go talk to Fast CTO.

Igor: 13:06

And what's even more interesting both interesting and frankly disappointing, or sad in a way is women get taken advantage of a lot more by these scammy dev shops than male. I don't have the numbers to know whether they waste more money or less, but they're certainly a bigger percentage of women. They get scammed, and men like per capita, and so what's happening is, if you're a female entrepreneur and you go to someone that knows what's up, they say go talk to Fast CTO. And what that turned into, completely unexpectedly, is about 80% of our clients are actually female founded, because basically a lot of folks that there are, wherever they are in the startup community in Boston and elsewhere, they basically get sent to us.

Lori: 13:53

Well, that's why we brought you here, because you make this approachable and it's so intimidating. And then you add to that the while there are women making head roads and technology, it's still decidedly favoring male energy more than female entrepreneurs, and we wanted to make this more accessible, more approachable. So thank you for simplifying it.

Nola: 14:20

So you had talked about things that, in hindsight, you wish people knew before they started an app. So if somebody hasn't started yet, what would you say their first step should be? What is the thing they should do before they even think about hiring anyone?

Igor: 14:37

Do some market research. A find out what's out there. If you find something similar, find the CEO on LinkedIn. Everybody's happy to share, and so, if you have an idea, find out who's doing what in industry. Most people are happy to share. There's enough room for everybody. Other people doing the same thing isn't scary. It means that there is actually a demand for it. So it's fine, go figure it out. Then call Fast CTM. We'll tell you whether you should spend money on this or not, and how much. That's probably about 70,000. Unless it's something super simple.

Lori: 15:08

But it's like 10,000.

Igor: 15:09

Honestly rarely yeah, very honestly, unless you're doing something super, super trivial or you're very aggressive with what the M in MVP stands for a minimally viable product. It's usually not 10,000.

Nola: 15:24

And you were so right about there definitely being a market demand for apps. We've got a statistic here that, according to Statista, by the third quarter of 2020, Android had 2.87 million apps to choose from and Apple users had 1.96 million apps available. What is that? That's more than I can.

Igor: 15:50

That's a smaller number than I expected on it.

Nola: 15:53

Really Single digit millions.

Igor: 15:55

I don't know if that's accurate.

Nola: 15:58

Really. Honestly, I think there's way more apps than that, I think there's a lot more than that Most of them are garbage, but there's a lot more than that.

Lori: 16:06

Wow. Is hiring somebody to build an app and hiring somebody a developer, to build software or a software for service? Are you using the same type of developer, like thinking a developer one size fits all kind of background, or are there specifics in that sense?

Igor: 16:28

It's more or less the same, but there are specifics. Again, back to my house analogy. Right? Some contractors have more experiences with Rick houses or wooden houses, houses on the hill, houses near water. So there's definitely differences between a website or a web app and an iPhone app and an Android app. You're looking for the same type of developers, but some developers prefer mobile, some developers prefer web. So you need to put together the right team for the thing that you're building. And that's the attraction, by the way, of dev shops, right? Like for all the poop that I talked about dev shops, there's benefits. There. They've got all these people under one roof. They could put together a team, whereas if you're going solo, you have to scrape together your own team.

Nola: 17:12

Speaking of which, if you were going to go and get something developed, which would be better hiring a company such as a dev shop that has that specialty or hiring a freelancer, and what are the pros and cons for each, have you been?

Igor: 17:27

reading my deck? Yeah, not telling.

Igor: 17:34

So I break it up into a couple of different categories. There's a technical co-founder, right, which is someone that you basically don't pay. They have equity and the pro of that is they're bought in. The con of it is if they walk out the door. It's messy, sometimes legally, sometimes emotionally, whatever, and they are likely to walk out the door if there's no revenue for a while or if you don't raise. It's risky. The next kind of this is not hierarchical. They're literally like different threads of the same thing.

Igor: 18:07

Right, you've got something like a dev shop. They've got a business reputation, unless they're out to scam you, which 5% of dev shops, maybe a little higher. So like, not most, but enough that it's an issue. So, dev shops, they have a reputation to uphold, but the way they make money is by charging. It's like the same $40 developers I mentioned earlier. If you're paying $40 for developer from a dev shop, that developer is making 1721. Usually the margins are about 60%, sometimes a little higher, sometimes a little lower, but usually right around there. That's the con.

Igor: 18:43

And then you've got freelance developers up work. I'm using as an example the pro there is like they want to please you and You're paying them by the hour usually, so they're happy to work. The problem is you're paying them by the hour, just like the dev shop. So if you don't tell them exactly how to do something, they're gonna invent the most complicated way to do it Because it's in their best interest to do that. Usually not always, but usually there have been successes with any one of those approaches and there have been some Horror stories with all three of those, and I'm not talking like out there in the ether with me. I've had horror stories with with co-founders, with dev shops, with solo developers, and I've had successes with all three of them if I were approaching a developer or a dev shop?

Nola: 19:30

How can I tell if somebody were trying to scam me? How can I tell if they're trying to take advantage of me?

Igor: 19:35

You can't, not until it's too late. I mean, I've gotten scammed as recently as several months ago, so it's yeah, it's hard. It's hard like I have a better year for it or I or some body part, but it's still hard. And and the problem is, the more junior someone is, the more likely there are tell you that they can do Anything you want. Right like they've got a huge ego. They haven't failed too badly yet in their career and they're like anything you tell me I can build it and their heart might be in the right place. But if you hear that about every single thing, you're saying Probably they can't. On the other end, with a super senior developer, they'll start telling you, ah, you don't want to go down this path. Maybe I can build it, but maybe do this instead like really good senior experience developers. They'll feel a lot. I guess you could say negative, but in a good way, in the way that you need them to be negative.

Lori: 20:29

This has been enlightening and helpful. Switching gears just a little, well, actually a lot. We're gonna table that part for the moment. We love eating and, as a matter of fact, nola and I came up with the idea for our podcast over dinner. We thought it would be interesting to see what your personal favorite recipes are and how they reflect your experience and journey To successful entrepreneurship. Can you tell us about your two recipes? Sure?

Igor: 21:03

My first recipe is a mojito, because a mojito Is actually hard to make and, no matter what anybody says, there's only one right way to make and If you want to make it, you'll fail the first time around. And Second, and the third, and eventually is gonna start tasting like a mojito. You have to make simple syrup, which is a whole process, but eventually you end up, if you work hard at it, a mojito. I'll come back with how that links in a second. Okay, on the other side of the spectrum, I love making miso soup and miso soup. You can make a million different ways. Experimentation is encouraged. You want meat Great. You don't want meat fine. The only thing it must have is miso, right, and water. Like I've made miso soup dozens of times, no, two times the same exact way, and it's delicious every time, almost every time, almost every time right. And so With the things you're doing in whatever type of startup, you're doing, like there are some things like you've got to get right, there's no other choice, and you might get it wrong the first time around.

Igor: 22:14

On the other hand, you there's things out there that you got to experiment with. You know marketing, all that kind of stuff. There's no right way to do it. Every company is different and you're gonna waste some money some of your, you know miso soups are gonna be not that great, but there's a lot of times you're gonna end up with something that works. That's different from what you thought was gonna work, and that's fine. That's great. It's very cool. I thought of that Right before the show. I wasn't prepared.

Nola: 22:44

That is very creative thinking, very creative thinking, moving on there. We asked you for one of your favorite quotes and you gave us a quote that is actually authentically your quote and it's something you said. You always say, and that is Shortcuts are okay to take, as long as you know you're taking them. So can you tell us more about that and how it reflects your experience and journey to successful entrepreneurship?

Igor: 23:20

Yeah, the way it boils down on the technical side is Any entrepreneur technical or not technical telling a developer go do something. When that developer is left to their own devices to Pick how they're doing it? They're gonna take shortcuts that you're not aware of. They're gonna make decisions that you're not aware of, and sometimes those decisions to be right, but often they're gonna be not right, but definitely not ones that you had any saying. And so what ends up happening later is in the back of your head. You have some you know thoughts about. Here's what my company is gonna be doing six months from now, 12 months from now, 18 months from now. That developer doesn't know, and so they're gonna take some shortcut that puts you in a dead end. Right to then six months, you'll be like, oh, I actually want to do this. And that developer some other developers are going to say, oh, I actually have to rebuild this whole section in order to do that, but if they had known, they would have built it differently and back when they were building it, maybe it's a one-hour difference.

Igor: 24:24

A really good example that happens pretty often is like low-code, no-code type sites, right, like there's a bunch out there like Bobble and etc. And they're great. I'm actually a big supporter of them for MVPs If your MVP is the type of MVP that fits within their framework. But what often happens is you go down this path with and I'm going to use Bobble just because they're the most popular one. You go down this path like I'm going to build this MVP, I'm going to use Bobble, for example, and you don't know where the boundaries are. You just looked at Bobble and you said, okay, it looks like they can do the thing that I want, but you don't know where you're going to be six months from now, 12 months from now. And so I've seen plenty of success stories of people using Bobble or something similar to build their MVPs and they're happy and it's great.

Igor: 25:15

But I've seen way more examples of somebody that uses one of these low-code networks or frameworks, built something and puts it out there and the first client they have says, oh, this is awesome, you can't do that with. Totally pay for it if it had X and you realize that you can't do that in Bobble, or you can't do it in some other area share, tribe or whatever else and now, basically, you just spent three months. Even something like Bobble will cost you $20,000, $30,000. And you're in the dead end.

Igor: 25:46

You throw it out, start from scratch because you weren't aware of the limitations and you weren't aware of the shortcuts, and so you don't want to be ever in that position. Meanwhile, it's perfectly okay to take shortcuts, as long as you know you're taking them, and you basically say, okay, I know the right way to do it is this I don't have the time, I don't have the budget, the bandwidth, whatever. I'm going to do it like this, but I know the gap and I know how I'm going to bridge that gap. When the time comes to it, you make sure that there is that bridge there. Or, if it's not, you just made a conscious decision to go in this direction and never go in that direction, but you don't want to be surprised by that. That's expensive.

Lori: 26:27

Yeah, igor, all the information you've shared, I feel like should be in a checklist that somebody who has a non-tech person or even, at this point, a tech person who has an idea for a business model because it's not just an app or a software solution, it is a business model should get in touch with you. So can you tell our listeners how they can learn more about you, your company, the services that you provide.

Igor: 26:55

You should listen to the sticky brand lab podcast.

Nola: 27:00

Yes.

Igor: 27:04

So I am uniquely the only person in the world with my name. You can Google me and you will absolutely find me. You could find me on LinkedIn. You could go to fastctocom CTO for Chief Technology Officer. You could email me, igor at fastctocom. My phone number is okay ring Igor. There's all sorts of different ways to get in touch with me.

Nola: 27:30

Listeners. You can also get the links, details and information about Igor, his company, fast CTO, the services they offer and capture his motto by visiting our website at stickybrandlabcom.

Lori: 27:45

Be sure to come back next Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring and motivating episode. And remember actions create results. So tap into your desire to create a business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day. Small steps, big effects.

Nola: 28:04

Do you have questions about creating a personal brand, side hustle or small business? Sign up for one of our clarity sessions. For more information, contact us at stickybrandlabcom.

Lori: 28:18

You love it as little as three hours a week. Well, you're working on it. It's a big commitment.

Nola: 28:24

It takes about 30 years, but hey.