That Randy Brown

Give Tech a Budget

I've worked with several bootstrapped founders now that have contracted out to have their application MVP built, and they've gotten the result they wanted, but are burdened by high hosting costs. I think it is a good idea to set an operations budget for contracting teams as an acceptance criterion. With 0 customers, this cost should probably not exceed 20 dollars a month. If an agency cannot meet this requirement, they are probably not a good fit for your work. If you're looking for someone that can meet this, e-mail me. :)

As a way to reinforce this, while an agency is building out a solution, they should do it in your hosting account (to free yourself from deep coupling / lock in with the vendor--see also deliverables for agencies), but they should probably pay the bill--especially if it exceeds the acceptance criteria. This will help them navigate budget requirements because expensive for you is expensive for them.

This also sets a company up for the long term. Even when you internalize the application, you will want to give the technology arm of the organization an operating budget, and these operating costs should be in it. Every major cloud provider lists cost optimization as an architectural principle for cloud native architecture, and for good reason--bad solutions cost more. Or, put another way: an expensive solution is a bad solution. A 0 user solution should cost near 0 dollars. Price should scale with paying customers.