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All right, my last question.
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Um, how many of these folks building software companies that you see, yourself included, are non-technical?
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Well, that's a great question and it's they are non-technical, what do they do? Yep.
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Um, so I'm a developer or I was.
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I haven't written code in years, but we actually asked So, we do a state of independent SaaS survey and we put out a report and it's like an industry report.
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And we asked the question, "Do you have at least one technical founder?" All right?
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Or, you know, and yes or no, right?
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And the number of SaaS companies, kind of bootstrapped-ish SaaS companies with zero with no technical founders, is like 20 I believe it's 20% 25% It's very possible. It is.
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And usually, what the expertise they have, they're either the subject matter expert, like, "We're going to build software for accountants.
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I was an accountant for 20 years." Right?
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"We're going to build software for UX designers.
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I I was a designer for 10 years."
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They're either that or they're sales or marketing.
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That's what they should have.
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Now, we've seen where there's a developer and then there's like the business person, the business guy or gal. And it's like anything.
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This is Yeah, usually when it's at a meeting, you're not actually that helpful and you probably shouldn't be a co-founder, you know?
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If you can't sell or market or like have input on the product, you know, or or develop it, like those are really the four roles.
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Um, you probably shouldn't be.
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So, if I'm if I like I'm not tech I'm not technical, but I um I can like tie stuff together and use Zapier and I'm super creative.
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How do I start a start a software company without hiring or I would maybe hiring's it, but without having a co-founder? Right.
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So, for you, since you have money, you would either acquire something cuz there's always stuff for sale that you may want to acquire and then just grow if you have a market content marketing expertise.
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Or, you would hire, you know a developer or an agency or something to build it.
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If you don't have the money, uh a lot of people non-technical will work a day job and actually funnel money to the side to basically pay for a developer to do it.
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Um the other two approaches I've seen are exactly what you said, which is I'm going to build my minimum viable product using Zapier and Notion and chewing gum.
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All right, and I'm just going to cobble it together to the point where hey, if I get a few grand a month in revenue, this proves it and now I'm going to use that to get it built.
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It's a harder way to go, but it's possible.
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The last one I've seen, which is genius, and this is what the founder Casto did cuz he's not he's a single founder, not a developer. He worked a day job.
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He started a productized service, podcast editing.
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And he hi he got it up to I forget what the number were, 30 or 40 grand a month in productized podcast He was one of the earlier ones.
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It was called Podcast Motor.
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He was working a day job the whole time.
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So then while he was in that space actually doing the editing or he would he did it at first and then and then got someone overseas? Yep. Yep.
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Or even even has folks in US and Canada doing it.
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Um and there was enough profit margin that he then started reinvesting, you know, and said, "I will now I want to build."
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Now that I'm doing podcast hosting, he actually was in the podcast space.
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Someone says I have this WordPress podcast plugin for podcast hosting on WordPress and I want someone to kind of adopt it type thing.
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Since he was doing something in public, they approached him.
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He bought it for not very much money and then he built the entire, you know, what it Again is a seven-figure business.
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He's raised, you know, three aside from us he's raised three quarters of a million dollars and it's growing fast.
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So that's the other way to do it is like I even I was a developer and I had to do it nights and weekends, too.
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You know, and I was pulling money away from the day job.
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For the agency and develop and hiring a developer, what what's the best way to do that?
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Do a lot of these folks like a lot like when I was starting, everyone said like, "Oh, just go on oDesk and hire someone in India to do it." And I'm like, "I I man.
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That doesn't sound like I can like like you can't really Yeah, so like what do you What what what are there any agencies that you like or for hiring devs, are you hiring someone by the hour in America?
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What what's what do you typically see?
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Yeah, I typically see I see a lot of people going either through referrals like you get into a community um MicroConf Connect or Indie Hackers or whatever Dynamite Circle and you ask and you say who has used someone whom you trust, right?
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So you try to get that referral that's not just a a flat look because going to Upwork, which used to be oDesk, is kind of a show these days.
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The other thing is there are now these uh referral services aggregators.
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There's one called Trustshoring, which is run by a guy who attends MicroConf, but he basically knows a bunch of Eastern European dev agencies and if you come to him and say, "I want to build an iOS app."
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He'll say, "Cool, I have these three agencies that I would that I refer to."
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He's almost like a broker in a way, but like he's a good dude and he knows them.
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You know what I So he and he's vetted them.
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And then there's one called clouddevs.
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com and they do the similar thing for Latin America.
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And so Do you like Do you like Toptal or anything like that? Toptal's good. It's expensive. Um right?
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Cuz I think it's $150 an hour, so it depends on budget and all that if you're if you're scraping by.
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I haven't used Toptal, but I've had friends use it and I heard quality was really good in the early days and of course like anything, it gets, you know, less and less, but um that's certainly something you could try, too.
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How much would you budget to create an MVP?
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It depends on what it is.
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You talking like a SaaS app?
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Here's the other thing, man.
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If you if you are non-technical and you've never started a startup before, I would say don't build a SaaS app. It's too hard.
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Like go I have this thing called the stair-step approach to bootstrapping, which is like start small with like a WordPress plugin, a HubSpot add-on, a Salesforce add-on, a Heroku add-on and go build that, cut your teeth at it.
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It's way less expensive, way harder to maintain and way easier to maintain.
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You get the experience, you get some revenue, then grow it to enough that you can buy out just buy out your day job.
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Eight grand to eight grand a month, maybe 10 grand a month.
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Then, and now you have experience, you can double down and um and do it. Dude, this is awesome.
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To your to your question of building an MVP of a SaaS app, 10 to 30 grand. Hard to throw it out.
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But and you think a non-technical person could actually maintain that and understand what's going on?
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Well, no, then you'd need to have that agency stick around.
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That's where I'm saying, if you're non-technical, um you either need some money.
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I mean, this is why, folks, you build it and you're you pre-sell it, you get to the point where there's enough revenue that you can then justify, you know, raising funding, right?
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If you're if you're non-technical, or you have a side job that's uh putting money