Forget the Developer (at first)

I’ve written about The Purlem Story a couple years back on Purlem’s blog. When I started Purlem, I knew very little about software development. Sure, I could throw together a quick site in Dreamweaver, but making that site dynamic in any way was a bit outside my wheel-house.

I’m saying that because I was not a software developer when I started Purlem. I had an idea, threw something together in Dreamweaver (you could do the same with square space, or launchrock), and tried to sell it. No developer necessary.

Here is what one of the first iterations of Purlem looked like. Don’t laugh.

I see it often - somebody has an idea for an app, and they assume their first step is to find a developer to build it. I mean, this is the fun part! However, unless you have a ton of cash on your side, this is a mistake.

Take Alex as an example. He’s a friend of mine and who recently built and sold a coffee roastery. He sold the business because he one - he realized that he hated retail, but also had an idea for a software product to help coffee roasters distribute their product more efficiently. Having some first hand experience in the industry, he felt he had created some systems around distribution that other roasters could benefit from. Makes sense.

Alex had about 6 months of “runway” before he ran out of cash to live on (and he had a new baby at home!). At the time, Alex’s primary concern was being able to find a developer to partner up with to build the product. He felt confident that if he built the product, sales would come (but obviously did not know this for sure).

Instead of going straight to hiring a developer, I encouraged Alex to try and sell the product before building it. Even better, after talking through the process with Alex, we found that he could “build” the entire product with a creative combination of Google docs, Zapier and Twilio. All without ever getting a developer involved.

By doing this, Alex could jump straight into selling. Once Alex makes a couple sales, it will increase his runway, and give him some cash to hire a developer.

So forget the developer at first, and instead start selling.