@bleung2bleung *You have three options* 1. Using an app builder This works when you have a rudimentary product concept and you'd like to test out your hypothesis with a real functioning app. There are many app builders these days like @nemanja_milic mentioned. However, I'm yet to discover a builder that allows you to launch a product with a good design that's serious enough to tackle the real-world market. Often times these also come with a deep learning curve. 2. Hire a technical co-founder You can hire a serious tech co-founder. This is often economical as you'd be hiring someone who wants skin in the game. He/She would work for Equity and is willing to give all it takes to see through your collective vision. However, the thing is, it's quite rare to find a person like this. Even if you do find one, and you are serious about building a business, you'd need to find more similar people with expertise in Design, Marketing, and Sales. This is a good way if your idea is validated — ideally, it can make money, or attract investment. 3. Hire a Product Agency There are significant advantages to hiring a serious product agency but the crucial thing is to know which one's a good agency. Good agencies are the ones who don't just take your orders, they act as an extension of your team — offering cross-domain expertise. They're the ones who can sit with you and brainstorm your business model, product design and dev, and marketing strategies. They are serious about what they do and want to build software that matters in the real world. The typical complaint that outsourcing is a waste of money and you'd have to do it all over again, is caused primarily due to penny squeezing. Early-stage entrepreneurs often tend to think that it's wise to hire the most economical team. Cheap agencies work with spec-sheets, they don't provide any conscious thought about the things they build. They rarely understand business models and vision; just take orders to send you an invoice. To conclude, You pick the right option according to your need. Everything has pro and cons. - If Idea is early and you have no money, go with an app builder. - If Idea is early and you have some money, go with a product agency. But be careful to find the right one. In the west, such agencies charge around $50K, if you find a remote-agency, this can cost around $20-25K. - If Idea is proven and you have access to a lot of money, involve real people and build a team. :Shameless_Plug: Hope this helps, happy to chat further if you think about finding a good agency, I run a remote-first full-stack product agency.

@bleung2bleung I would love to hear what people have to say about this. I am non-technical myself, and work with technical cofounders, but have been extremely interested in seeing the no-code options that have been popping up. I'd love to hear people's thoughts of teaming up with a technical cofounder versus working around this another way!

@bleung2bleung Apponboard, bubble.io, buildfire, and hack alot more on makerpad.co and nocode.tech. Happy making :)

@bleung2bleung there are so many no code options on the market these days - do you have a particular product in mind? I have loved using SquareSpace and all the integrations that come with it. Carrd is useful, too. You don't need to be a coder to integrate Stripe into these and start payments because their documentation is so simple.

@bleung2bleung I outsourced my app. But that ultimately failed. 6k down the tank. And then I found 2 technical co-founders.

@bleung2bleung I am a non technical founder working together with 2 other technical co-founders since last 5 years. In my opinion, you must look for techy founders for a long term scalable solution/product you're thinking to build else you can use no code options these days to build MVP and get some traction also helping you onboard some brilliant tech founders afterwards. Another way is to hire app dev. agencies and get your product in market. Once it get's traction you can build your tech team. There is nothing write or wrong in any of these options, these all depends upon situations and conditions. Yes, you must be wise to take decisions because some may backfire if not chosen correctly as per the situation.

@bleung2bleung I would say it is very difficult and very risky to develop a project that way. You may hire a team that looks good, say the right things, and what they develop even works. However at some point you may find your product down because there are now already several concurrent users online and nobody took time to optimize database queries; or it may be hacked the next day after launching because nobody cared about any security issues. This list of potential issues is really endless. And at the point when you get into trouble and find another team to help you may find out that your code is a mess and hopeless. Or the new team will tell you so but may be it won't be true... In other words you'll get a black box you cannot control after paying a fortune, unless somebody who is really good follows everything from the technical side. And the last but not least, if you are looking for investors at some point, one of the first questions they will ask is whether you have a CTO co-founder. If you don't, most likely they will say "no".

@bleung2bleung I am a technical founder and have worked with outsourcing teams before. I had a terrible experience with outsourcing every single time. As for no-code products, it really depends on what you want to build. If your product is one where tech is just an enabler, you can be totally fine using all the no-code products out there. You can start getting basic users and revenue with a landing page and some basic follow on pages, and then get a developer later on if required. However, if you want tech to play a very big role in your product, you should think long term and try to find a tech cofounder or early employees. If you want to invest time, it's not a bad idea to learn some code yourself too. It's really not hard to learn basic coding to be able to put up a few functional beautiful looking pages together. Cheers!

@bleung2bleung are you saying that your platform is trying to solve the issue of non tech entrepreneurs wanting to make things?

@bleung2bleung I don't think that you will need an option to build technical knowledge if you lack some, P.s that is your will if you want to learn for personal growth. However getting things outsourced and getting them done with your direction and vision will also produce a good product!