Advice for ITE non-programmers

2023-11-24

During the ITE end-of-semester panels, there was one group that said they were outsourcing the development of their prototype to a tech consultant. Please do not do this. There are at least two major problems with outsourcing your development work:

• Obviously, you will burn cash. This is bad enough for most startups, but your ITE startups will very likely not have any cash. Whose cash would you be burning?
• Building software is not like building a physical structure. Software development is characterized by chaos, misunderstanding, and revision. If you separate the development work from the founding team, every single misunderstanding and revision will have to traverse a message or an email. There will be hundreds, if not thousands, of such misunderstandings and revisions. This goes double for startups, because not only is the software misunderstood, the very problem space is often misunderstood, too. Your consultant will build your product, and it won't be what you want. This is almost guaranteed.

We think that your groups need to have at least one programmer. If you can't find a programmer, find someone willing to learn. You need to be able to make your product in-house.