How Many Developers Do I Need for My Startup

So you are a startup looking to hire dedicated developers to convert your app or website idea into a reality. Then you have landed at the right blog. In this blog, we have talked in detail about how many developers your startup needs to create a successful mobile app or website?

Every company, whether small or large, need to hire a dedicated skilled and experienced developer to code for their app. Although there are several no-code tools available that allow you to develop products without coding knowledge. But the need for skilled and experienced developers has not gone away and you need developers until the final product is ready.

Several startup founders struggle to find the right talent because they don’t know how to find a developer nor how many developers they need. When we observed a few startups, we found that there is a huge difference in the number of developers.

You might also be surprised when you look at the product and with the number of developers. Even their competitors with successful projects have huge differences in the number of developers. For instance, when Facebook bought Instagram, there were 15 employees managing Instagram.

In the lifecycle of a product development there are five main phases.

1. Develop MVP model

An MVP model of your mobile app has minimum and valuable features. When you are developing an MVP mobile app, you focus mainly on must-have features and cut out all unwanted features.

The only purpose of developing an MVP model is to grab the attention of the early adopters of your product. It is the MVP model that startups present in-front of the investors to attract them.

Hope you all understand about MVP and why you should develop. Let’s discuss the number of developers you need.

For developing an MV model, you don’t need more than 1�"2 developers. Hiring more developers for developing an MVP model is mostly a waste of money and communication. To build an interactive and intuitive MVP, you can hire a full time developer or dedicated remote developers with an experience of 2�"3 years. 

If you reside in the USA, then a developer can charge you around $40- $60 per hour, on the other hand if you reside in India, a developer might charge you around $20-$30 per hour. If you are having a low budget for hiring a full time developer, you can hire a freelance developer. The MVP model helps your development team to start small, move quickly & keep iterating.

2. Scaling your mobile application

If you have successfully launched your MVP app and grab enough users for your app. And now you are planning to develop alpha, beta versions of your app. You need to first ask yourself what will be the scale of your application? Whether it will be a small, or large project.

This is because the number of developers also depends upon the scale of mobile application. For example, if you are planning to develop an eCommerce website like Myntra, amazon, etc. Then, you need a development team, because such websites have several modules such as payment, order management, inventory management system, the user facing site etc. If you want to launch your final product as soon as possible, then you need development.

3. Adequate Market for your product

Finding an adequate market for your product is the most crucial step in the development phase of life of a startup and many commit mistakes in it. Several startup owners think that they have figured out their product market and they move on to scaling their product without the correct market.

When you are finding a market for your product, you need a few developers mainly to work repeatedly on the initial versions of your idea and smooth edges. Finding the right product market fit is hard, so the number of developers that can drive your startup product forward is low. Indeed, adding too many developers can increase your cost and wasteful activity that ties developers down.

4. Start scaling your product

Once you have found the right market for your product, you need to start working on the scaling product. In this phase, you need the most developers because now you have traction from users and they want to use your product. Scaling in simple terms means that you are growing your product market share and increasing revenues.

After finding a product market, it is easy to scale your product. At this stage, you need a couple of developers to perform different tasks such as integrating products with different marketing tools, integration with other platforms, other APIs or other tools, Writing and maintaining API needs and others.

5. Optimize your product

It is the final step in the development process of your startup product which is product optimization. Now when your startup product has a large percentage of the user or reachable market. There might be no more room left for scaling your product. All you can do is work on fixing bugs, cut costs and keep the cash cow running. In this phase you need a few developers,

Conclusion

Being a startup you need to understand the importance of the number of developers because you have limited resources for the business. If you have the right numbers of developers it makes your development process smoother. Having too few developers slows things down and on the other hand, having too many wastes money and slows things down too. You can plan your number of developers according to development phases.

Originally published on: blog.devgenius.io

Author's Note

Sidharth Jain, Proud Founder of GraffersID, Top Web and Mobile App Development Company based in India. Providing dedicated remote developers, hire reactjs developers in India, Trusted by startups in YC | Harvard | Google | Coca-Cola. 80% Clients raised funding and scaled their team in a week. He understands how to solve problems using technology and contributes his knowledge to the leading blogging sites.