Don't Hire Devshops (I'll Tell You Why)

▶️ Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉 

Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast.

In episode #16 of "Backstage Tech", we're walking through a 10-point framework to tell whether you're talking to a real development partner — or a devshop that will burn your time and cash.

Pulling from 8+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with software founders, here's what separates a partner who moves your business forward from a vendor who hides behind documentation the moment something goes wrong:

1. Ownership mindset — devshops spend your money, partners make you money. You feel the difference in the first conversation
2. Founder accessibility — if you can't get anyone with real authority on a call before signing, imagine what happens after you pay
3. Team retention — check LinkedIn before you commit. High turnover is a red flag that tells you everything about the culture
4. Proactive suggestions — order takers wait for instructions. Real partners show up with ideas before you even ask
5. Chase dynamic — if you're always hunting them down for updates, that's your answer. A real partner is chasing you

If you own, fund, or lead a software product, this episode gives you a practical checklist to use on your next agency discovery call — before you wire a single dollar.

👉 Want to talk through how to find the right dev partner for your product? Email ogo@procoders.tech or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Every founder had this thought at least once. Can I grow my business faster if I hire a dev agency to support my team? You always think about it when you're short on dev resources, your team is struggling to ship on time, or you're drowning in customer requests and can't touch the roadmap. If you don't have this problem, skip this video. But if you thought about bringing in an outside dev team at least once, listen up. I'm going to help you save a lot of money and teach you how to tell whether you're talking to a dev shop or a real business partner. I've also built a 10-step framework for this. Super simple to follow. Before we dive into the framework, make sure you hit subscribe and like this video. Let's go. Alright, so you've got a software product. You've got traction, customers are happy, but your team gets swamped from time to time. So you need someone to help with delivery to move faster, build integrations, new features, maybe to clean up some technical debt, whatever it is, you need extra hands. Now, you're not gonna hire a freelancer for this. You want someone who takes responsibility, so you start looking for an agency. But here's the thing, choosing a dev shop can burn a lot of time and cash. You will end up chasing them for updates, explaining things over and over, and every time when something goes wrong, they will be hiding behind the documentation saying, you didn't specify this, so we didn't know we needed to build it. What you actually want is a real partner, someone who cares about your business outcomes, not just shipping features. Someone who thinks about your product like it's their own. The trick is knowing how to spot the difference before you wire any money. Let me walk you through the 10 signals you should look for when evaluating any development partner. These are battle tested from years of being on both sides of the table. Number one, ownership mindset. This is the big one. Everything else flows from this. Dev shops spend your money. Partners make you money. Feel the difference? A dev shop doesn't care about your business model, your customers, your cash flow, and your profitability. They care about billing hours and collecting payment. A partner asks you about your roadmap. They want to understand your competitors. They're curious about how much revenue you're making and they're thinking about your project like it's their own. And you can feel this from the very first conversation. Are they trying to squeeze you like a towel or are they trying to understand how to create real value for your business? Number two, founder accessibility. Can you actually talk to someone with the skin in the game? With a Dev Shop, the founder is hiding behind layers of account managers and project coordinators. You'll never get FaceTime with anyone who actually built the company. With a real partner, even if it's 100 to 200 people, you can always request a meeting with the founder, even just 10 to 15 minutes. They make themselves available because they actually care about the relationship. Now let's be realistic. If you're working with a thousand plus person agency, you're probably not getting the founder on the call. And that's fine. But you should still have access to someone senior who has real decision-making power, not just a coordinator reading from a script. Red flag? If you can't get anyone with authority on the call before signing, imagine what happens when things go sideways after you've paid. Number three, team retention. Before you start any project, ask this question. Who will be on my team? Can I see their profiles? Then do some homework. Check LinkedIn. Use Sales Navigator. Look at how long people have been with the company. If you see a bunch of developers who joined three months ago and already left, that tells you one of the two things. Either their hiring is broken or something is wrong with the company culture, so people are jumping ship. High retention means the good people stick around. And those are the people you want working on your product. Number 4. Response time. A dev shop will always leave you hanging. You'll send a question and hear nothing for days. Or worse, you'll get some vague, we'll get back to you soon. That means absolutely nothing. A real partner responds fast. Even if they don't have the answer yet, they will say, I don't have the answer for you right now, but I'll have it for you tomorrow by 3 pm. That's clarity, and that's respect for your time. In B2B, speed of communication is a proxy for how much they value the relationship. Number 5. Proactive suggestions. This one applies to every vendor relationship you'll ever have. Development, marketing, design, doesn't matter. The pattern is the same everywhere. A dev shop asks, what do you need us to do? They wait for instructions because they're order takers. A partner says, here's what we suggest doing, and gives you options. They bring ideas to the table. They've thought about the problem before the meeting even started. See the difference? One is passive, waiting for you to figure everything out. The other is actively trying to move your business forward. If you're always the one coming up with solutions and they're just executing, that's a dev shop. A partner challenges your thinking and makes you better. Number six, transparency of model. Some agencies have this black box approach. All communication goes through a project manager, you never see the developers, you have no idea who's actually writing the code for your product. That's a dev shop move. A partner lets you meet with engineers. They let you interview the team before the project starts. Nothing crazy deep. Just enough to see if these people understand your product, your users, and your timeline. If they're hiding the team from you, ask yourself why. Number 7. Shared Responsibility. With a dev shop, the responsibility is 100% on you. Something breaks? Well, you didn't specify this in the requirements. Feature doesn't work right? That wasn't in the scope. They will always hide behind documentation every single time. A real partner thinks about age cases in the bigger picture. If it's a mobile app, they ask about what OS versions you need to support. If it's enterprise software, they will ask how many user roles you have, and they always think two steps ahead. I learned this the hard way. On a delivery app project, we had to test the app on old Android phones on purpose. The delivery drivers all used one specific model. The app needed to be lightweight and support live GPS tracking at the same time. A dev shop would have built it for the latest devices and called it done. We approached it differently because we actually thought about who was going to use the thing. Number eight, attention to detail. Here's a simple test. On your first discovery call, ask them this. Did you look at my website? A dev shop will stumble. They have no idea what you do. They are running the same generic script for everyone. A partner comes prepared. They've researched your business, your industry, maybe even your background. Their questions are sharp. Not just what do you want to build, but why do you need this? What challenge does it solve? What's the ROI? It's like going on a first date. If someone asks you, do you like tennis? And your entire Instagram is about hockey, they didn't care enough to prepare. Number 9. Chase Dynamic. Pay attention to the dynamic before the project starts. With a dev shop, you're always the one chasing. Chasing for updates, chasing for fixes, chasing for answers, and it's exhausting. With a partner, they're chasing you. They ping you twice a day because your success depends on how quickly you give them feedback. They want your input. They ask, what do you think of this? instead of saying, here's the link, it's done. If you find yourself constantly hunting someone down to get answers, that's a dev shop. Number 10. Outcome orientation. Last one. Ask about their previous project. Not just about what they built. Ask what their clients' goals were. What were they trying to achieve? If their case studies say things like created traction, reached 5x ROI, onboarded X customers, that tells you they care about business outcomes, not just shipping code. But if everything you see is just we build an iOS app or provided engineers, that's a dev shop. They didn't care about why it was built or what happened after. Let me break this down into a simple framework you can reference. Look, no agency is going to hit all 10 perfectly. Every company has their own rules and non-negotiables. But if you're scoring 7 to 8 out of 10 on this framework, you've probably found a real partner. And that's extremely valuable if you're trying to scale fast without burning your business to the ground. I put together a one page checklist with all these 10 signals so you can use it on your next discovery call. The link is in the description. If this was helpful, please subscribe. I drop videos like this every two weeks to help founders like you scale faster without burning your team. I'll see you in the next one.