The next big video I do will be on ways in which non-technology founders get bitten by software development agencies.
The one that’s come up – just now actually – is that agencies will try and position themselves as the whole technical function of the business, whereas in reality they should be a delivery partner only.
The business you building is your mission, and an agency should just be a “booster rocket”, i.e. they get the show off of the ground, but there’s supposed to be a “we’ll take it from here” part from the business commissioning the work, and that should happen quite quickly after you get up out of the “gravity well”, i.e. when you know you have something real.
For example, yes your development agency might have configured your backups – why an agency is doing any operational work at all is beyond me, but here we are – but you as the founders of the business are responsible for knowing the backups actually work.
Reframing the relationship with your agency as a delivery partner ONLY is hard, because the agency wants to be your technology partner. But you are building a technology business, so really you should not need a technology partner at all.
It’s this old adage about outsourcing – outsource the stuff you don’t want to get good at. If you’re a technology business, you need to get good at and continue to get increasingly better, at the technology.