My four foundational startup building principles

Sometime ago I launched a Twitter poll asking to vote on what I should write about next. Well, I finally got around to writing the most upvoted (at the time) post which was ‘Say No to App Agencies‘. Check it out on the Galileo blog here.

Interestingly, we had a many of new, mostly non-tech founders, apply to Galileo recently looking to use app agencies to do their first build which made the article even more relevant for our purposes.

But in writing the piece I teased out 4 core startup building principles that I wanted to share here:

1. Never outsource your core competencies.
2. Early startup products can’t be scoped, they’re explored.
3. Outsource non-core services as much as possible.
4. Founders can not abdicate their responsibilities to non-founders.

I think these are pretty good principles for any startup but always open to hear other people’s thoughts. What’s missing and what you would prioritise?

I’ve included snippet of the article below:

Say no to app agencies

We’ve had many great conversations with non-technical founders who have applied to Galileo. Some are working with digital app agencies or thinking about it working with them. My short answer is don’t. My longer answer is maybe as a short term solution under some circumstances but read on.

App agencies have proliferated recently with lots of them targeting newbie founders. In my experience, this type of partnership does not work. And in some circumstances, it can even be predatory.

This post is probably going to be a contentious article for some. I’m aiming to provide the perspective of a startup investor talking with an early founder who is looking to build a high growth, high impact startup and looking to raise money.

This is not to say there aren’t good app agencies out there or that good software developers don’t work agency-side. It’s just that for high growth startups, they’re rarely aligned with the needs of your startup.

What are app agencies?

There are no strict definitions but essentially digital app agencies specialise in building apps for clients. I’ll exclude freelancers, contractors or offshore engineering teams (where you work ‘directly’ with the people writing the code) as they’re essentially managed ‘in-house’ often with a lead engineer, as I’ll mention below.

Think X big brand wants a new app for a marketing campaign or a new line of sports apparel. Many have gone ‘down stream’ and now target founders, helping them build their first app or sometimes whole business. We’ve also noticed ‘MVP consultancies’ pop up to help build your MVP doing similar things.

Either way they typically charge (a lot) of money and/or equity to build your product and business.