So, you are a budding entrepreneur and have a brilliant idea, and the idea is on paper.

You have a business plan ready. Now to get this to the market, you need an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to start your journey. So, the first thing you do is to get a development team in place to start the development work.

As a start-up, the budget is always a constraint. You need to get a quality output at the least possible price. At this stage, most people look eastwards. India is a favorable destination for getting developers at an economical price.

But how do you choose your development team?

These days there are multiple marketplace websites like UpWork, Guru, etc. where you can post your requirements and hundreds of freelancers and companies start bidding on your project.

Their system is sound, your money is safe and using various parameters, you can choose your development partner.

But all is not so rosy. Finally, you need a product which is the best in the market and which will wow your end users and make your potential investors sit up and take notice.

Fine, your money is safe in an escrow but what about after 3 months of effort you end up getting something which is less than 50% of what you envisaged? You restart the search for development partner again? This can cause a lot of frustration, and I have seen multiple projects fail because of the wrong choice of the development team.

If you feel comfortable in using these marketplace portals to choose your development partner, go ahead but never rely on a freelancer to deliver you a full-fledged product. Freelancers are good enough for small websites and small projects but when you are developing a product you would need multiple resources like UI Designers, Front End Coders, Web Developers, Mobile APP developers, Testers, etc.

Can freelancers provide all the skill sets? Mostly NO.

Yes, there are companies also listed on these freelance portals and they bid as well, and you can very well choose a company to tie up with. But don’t you think to go through more than a 100 proposals could be a tedious task?

My view is that one should do a simple Google Search to find a reliable Software Development Company who can be your technology partner and help you in developing the product.

A Google search will also give you 100’s of companies. Go to the top-ranked websites that show up in your Google Search. Do a thorough review about their service offerings, have a talk with their representative, have a look through their portfolio of works, if required talk to their existing clients and once you are satisfied and get the positive vibes, go ahead and sign the contract.

Before signing the contract, do make sure that you are comfortable with the payment terms, ensure that an NDA is in place to protect your IP rights and of course, check if the selected company has a ‘Money Back Policy’ or a ‘Life Time Support Policy’ or not.

By the time your MVP is ready, I am sure you will know that your choice of selecting the software company was right or wrong. Most of the times you will find that your choice was right and you will end up contracting this same company again once you get your investors on board to develop the full product.