When did you realize your first software development partner wasn’t working and you had to find a better partner to move forward?
It’s so common, even in the AI age, that it’s a predictable question for non-technical founders in their journey to create a valuable software company.
We get started with that scrappy guy or small team somewhere in the world. We build something customers start to like and are willing to pay for.
Then things slow down: buggy releases, poor communication, missed expectations, and higher costs.
Was starting a software company and building a product supposed to be this hard?
🔧 Keith Shields 🖌️ is the co-founder and CEO of Designli, a custom software development company that has helped non-technical founders build over 200 digital products in 12 years.
After struggling to build apps through unreliable agencies in his own early startup, Keith focused on fixing the many painful experiences most founders have when hiring software development teams.
Designli operates as a complete outsourced engineering department for practical software founders building SaaS and AI products, mobile apps, and web applications.
Their SolutionLab program means founders invest in a 2-week design sprint of prototyping and product planning before committing to full development, reducing the risk of expensive failures that plague most custom dev projects.
The company focuses primarily on vertical SaaS founders who understand their industry problems intimately but lack technical expertise, like many practical founders.
When founders have a bad feeling about their product progress and the impact on their business, Keith recommends they get an outside evaluation before it’s too late.
“My advice for non-technical founders that already have a product is to trust your gut when you ask, Are we getting the value out of our development team in this situation?
“If you already have a product and your dev team isn’t working, get an outside perspective. It’s not that hard to go and get what you’re doing audited by people, sometimes for free, like us, or you pay for it.
“You send off a copy of your code in a zip file. It doesn’t even have to be the living, breathing version and say, Can you audit this and give me a gut check?
“Getting an outside review of your code doesn’t happen that often, surprisingly. People feel stuck in their frustrating situation until they make a huge change, and then it’s a risky, huge change. So get some outside perspective early and often.”
I have seen hundreds of founders who get stuck with a product development mess who could have used a savvy assessment of their code and development process.
They could have moved to a better partner earlier and saved years and millions of dollars in investment.
Check out this episode with Keith Shields on the Practical Founders Podcast.
