Just Decide Startup Dilemma Of The Week: Should I Fire My Outsourced Developer?

If you haven’t been keeping up with the JustDecide.com/Nibletz startup dilemma of the week, you should be. This valuable feature from both justdecide.com and Nibletz, provides insight into issues that a lot of startups are facing. In addition to checking out this week’s Justdecide.com/Niblets startup dilemma of the week, you can also submit your own dilemma for consideration at startups@nibletz.com. Now you can crowdsource your problems and dilemmas that could be quite costly for the average founder.

This week’s startup dilemma of the week is undoubtedly something that hundreds, if not thousands of startups have faced.

“Should I fire my outsourced developers”. The situation is this, a startup has outsourced their development work. They went through elance.com which typically has a good developer base. However the project is taking a lot longer than expected and it’s costing a lot more as it drags on.

While everyone wants to believe the best in people, when startups are faced with this exact issue you can’t help but wonder if the outsourced developer is just trying to milk you for more non-existent funds or if they’re really having a hard time with the concept and project you gave them. Either way, your marketing is in place and you’ve been grilling your team for months to make sure they’re ready for even the most alpha-ist of beta launches.

Without the work of the outsourced developer you have no product to sell. In some cases the outsourced developer may think that they have you between a rock and  a hard place. Because they do.

The Details:I outsourced the web development work for my startup and it is taking longer than expected and getting more expensive. I had a great idea for a social gaming startup, but couldn’t find a technical co-founder. I decided to raise some FFF money (family, friends and fools), and found someone through elance to build my gaming app. The developer said that it was going to be more complicated than he originally thought and it has been over the 6 months timetable he originally gave me. He is charging me for the hours that he is still working on it, and I don’t know if I am getting ripped off, or if the development work was more complicated than I thought.

What do you think this startup should do?

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