Why you should trust Peslo to build your MVP

You've had an idea for a startup to solve a problem, and you're now on track to positively impact our world. You've done your market research and competitor analysis, considered product market fit, built a business plan, and perhaps even spoke with some investors. Now, you just need to work out how you'll build the app that'll change the world.

There's a few ways you could accomplish this:

• In-house engineering with full-time employees
• In-house engineering with contractors
• Outsourcing
• Working with an experienced app agency like Peslo

We believe that the best way for you to accelerate your startup to achieve product market fit is to work alongside a world-class app agency like Peslo to deliver your minimal viable product (MVP). Naturally, there are some advantages and disadvantages to the other approaches:

In-house engineering will full-time employees

Advantages:

• You get to build an internal team, and establish a fun & engaging culture
• If your startup goes well, if your internal team have equity, they benefit from the growth - improving their lives
• Your team retains knowledge in-house, which can be shared as the company scales

Disadvantages:

• Engineers can be very expensive - in the UK a typical software engineer salary is in the region of £65k-£80k for a mid-level engineer, and £85k-£120k for a senior engineer - not including additional company costs like pensions, employer tax contributions, equipment, benefits. For an internal team to succeed, you'd need very senior engineers who would rightly demand a high salary
• Early stage startups are high risk - prospective engineers may be unwilling to join an unproven startup, and if the company doesn't achieve the expected growth, you may have to scale down the team
• Building and leading a high-achieving engineering team comes with its own challenges, that may distract you from your core business

In-house engineering with contractors

Advantages:

• There are less costs to be concerned about - the contractors are paid per day & handle all of their equipment / taxes / training by themselves
• Contractors are highly skilled & can get up and running in a short time period
• Contractors can work alongside an in-house team to rapidly scale a product
• Once a project has been completed, contractors can easily be offboarded - there is no long term commitment or requirement to provide more work

Disadvantages:

• Some contractors may not provide a high level of documentation for once they've left, meaning that knowledge is lost
• Some contractors will strongly prefer to work in their own way, meaning that code standards and ways-of-working can vary greatly

Outsourcing

Advantages:

• Significantly cheaper than in-house engineering, especially with outsourcing firms outside of NA / EU
• There are many outsourcing companies to choose from, with a large amount of competition driving down prices

Disadvantages:

• Quality is often exceptionally poor with outsourced engineering teams - with prices being driven down by high competition, often projects will have entry-level engineers who lack the experience of building a solution that will scale into the future
• Data security / infrastructure security is a concern - with outsourcing firms often operating in jurisdictions with less regulation, less effort & care is put into security, meaning there is an increased risk of security incidents which in the NA / EU area would have significant financial / legal impacts on your business
• Outsourcing firms will often reuse other projects in unanticipated ways to reduce their costs further, meaning you may receive an app that will be very difficult to scale as your business scales, as it'll contain redundant & misused logic that's been bodged into working to meet your requirements

Working with an experienced app agency like Peslo

Working with an app agency who's seen it all before can help your startup reach product market fit more quickly, and help you achieve your return on investment (ROI) that'll allow your business to rapidly scale. Here's a few ways in which Peslo can help drive your project to success:

Expertise and Experience

We have a proven track record in delivery of high-quality, reliable, maintainable, and scalable apps for a range of clients, from pre-revenue startups like Clean Me Marketplace to 'double unicorns' like Zilch, valued in the multiple billions of dollars. If you can imagine a feature for your app, we've almost certainly built something like it before! We've even built and spun-off our own startups Perception and VIKIN so we even understand the problems beyond engineering too.

Speed and Efficiency

Your startup needs to scale quickly - so you need an app agency who understands this. Our consultants have a long-history working with startups so we understand how your business priorities may suddenly change, how you need to test multiple approaches, and how you need to adapt to a rapidly evolving market. We work with you in our investigation phase to understand how these impact your business. Our experience in mobile then allows us to move quickly, without sacrificing quality.

Quality Assurance

We know what makes a good app, and what is needed to turn a good app into the number 1 app on the App Store. Not only do we focus on building features that wow your users, but we pay attention to the details and make sure your MVP is reliable, stable, maintainable, and matches your requirements - allowing you to grow your business without worrying that your users are having a bad experience. We ensure quality by building a robust specification, and following it up with a range of unit & integration tests, exploratory tests, and automated E2E testing. Our ways-of-working also ensure you get to see & feel your app quickly throughout the development process so you can provide prompt feedback

Cost Efficiency

Building an in-house team is very expensive, and outsourcing offshore can be very cheap - working with Peslo is a good middle-ground between the two that allows you to invest money into other areas of your business without sacrificing quality. We've already built our team of experienced consultants, and we handle the costs that come with running a talented team of engineers so you don't have to. Our estimation process also allows us to accurately estimate the cost of your project, providing transparency and preventing unexpected cost overruns.

Core Business Focus

By working with Peslo to build your MVP, your headspace is freed up to focus on your core business functions - like marketing, strategy, customer acquisition, funding, and product vision. We work closely with you to ensure the product aligns with a rapidly changing product vision, and whilst we work to deliver your app, you can focus on other ways to grow your startup.

Experience with Latest Technologies

We like to stay on the cutting-edge, so we're constantly gaining new experience with the latest technologies and tools - allowing us to be in the best position to advise you on the ideal tech stack that brings a combination of reliability, availability of engineers, ease of scaling, and cost efficiencies. And as we've used a wide range of technologies across our projects, we can actually tell & show you how these have made a positive impact.

Scalability and Flexibility

We've worked with startups like yours before - we understand that your key priorities are growth, reducing cash burn to preserve your runway, and ability to adapt as your definition of market-fit changes. We build your app with consideration for how it'll need to rapidly scale in the future, so it can grow and evolve in response to user feedback and market needs. We can also operate on a variety of flexible engagement models to best fit your funding situation and support needs, to ensure your app receives ongoing development work and maintenance.

User-Centric Design

We know what happens when users are forgotten about during the design & product processes - they don't use the app as it doesn't do what they actually care about. With our varied experience on a range of products, we can guide you to a user-centric design and craft an experience your users will love & keep returning to. With insights from a range of industries, from automotive to fintech, proptech to utilities, we can ensure your app meets user expectations and delivers the ROI you're looking for.

Long-Term Partnerships

We know the path of growing a startup is a long one, with many challenges along the way. We pride ourselves on establishing partnerships beyond the MVP process, to ensure your app is continuously improved based off of real-world usage and feedback. By using responsible analytics to show how your app is being used, we can make data-driven decisions to help you achieve your product market fit. As a trusted engineering partner for a range of high-growth startups, you can focus on growing your startup and rest easy knowing that your app is in safe hands.

To summarise, working with an established agency like Peslo is the best way to take your MVP from ideation to success. We take on the engineering work, giving you the headspace to take your startup from pre-revenue to the heights of success.

Want to chat with us about how we can deliver world-class software for your company? Book a call with us here: https://peslostudios.com/contact