Highlight Reel of June 2025 Webinar

We're talking about the five hidden pitfalls that derail software projects and how to avoid them. There's a lot of companies that are just like "We will take your money and never deliver anything." And for some reason they feel okay with that.

We're going to have a little fun here today. We're going to talk about what's broken in this software development industry.

The Pricing Trap

So then after a couple weeks the proposals start coming in and they have a radically different scopes of work. One dev firm will be typically I see about $30,000, then another dev firm will be like "this we think is like a $300,000 project" and then they get one for $150,000.

A lot of times we find that they go with the cheaper option and then get stuck in this trap of "that wasn't something that we discussed in our scoping - now this is going to be another $30,000, this is going to be another $70,000, this is going to be another $50,000" and they just get caught in this constant contract trap.

Lack of Clear Direction

A lot of times we have people come to us wanting engineering help and I'm like "Okay what are they going to start working on first?" Crickets.

If I hired an engineer tomorrow what would I have them start working on? And if you can't answer that question we need to think about that, okay?

Working on the Wrong Things

The development team keeps working on things that aren't important. That doesn't happen does it?

No Analytics from Day One

No analytics in version number one. So users won't tell you what's wrong with your project or your product but their actions will. Or you're wasting time improving things that don't matter and there's a higher churn and lower adoption, but also understanding what they're doing in your product.

I've had a lot of startups come to me that say "Hey we get all these people that sign up but they never get to a subscription." That sounds like something's wrong in your onboarding phase.

Poor User Experience

Customers today do not have any patience for your janky bull crap. How many people have signed up for a software platform, gotten straight into it, can't figure out how to do it and then immediately unsubscribe and never think about it again? All of you.

They lost a customer because they built something terrible. They push something out super freaking fast that nobody in the general public is able to use. Get fired up.

So you don't have to be first but you do have to be better.

The "70% Done" Problem

Companies will come to us and go "I'm working with this other firm but they've been 70% done for nine months now."

Now granted this startup had been working with that engineer for two years. I showed up at the next call - guess who didn't show up? Guess who quit?

So all this time the founder thought that they were... they all they needed was to get the payment integration and they would be able to launch.

The Real Cost

Mistakes cost startups millions of dollars every year. Millions of dollars. And we really believe that they don't have to.