Completely agree. This is the really powerful thing. Don’t just hire order takers - hire the ones that really understand a company’s product, vision, and goals. Someone that can anticipate what the client may wish to do with the app in future even if the client doesn’t realise or know yet so that you can ensure the app is built in a way that facilitates that in future. Someone that can at least facilitate discussion or offer direction in terms of pricing or product strategy, or constructively criticise anything that seems like a glaringly bad idea. There’s a place for order takers in larger agencies, but less so in smaller ones.
Thank you for sharing those ideas with the community, George. I think the pricing model that you have proposed has at least 3 distinct benefits when it comes to developing apps for clients:
- The flexible subscription approach is very useful for lowering the entry barrier for those risk-averse clients who are reluctant to enter lengthy deals with a fixed monthly retainer where they are not guaranteed results yet have to pay a recurring fee. I think such a flexible model would be more compelling to this kind of buyers.
- I also like how simple and straightforward the result sounds (build an app for $10K in 2 weeks). The value for a client is very evident: it takes a way shorter time to get results, costs significantly less than other agencies, and at the end of it they are not stuck with a contract that they don’t want to have in the first place.
- Additionally, I feel like over the long run the pay-per-feature model is going to be way easier and far more efficient than trying to scope everything before starting to work on the project and then having to deal with misunderstandings and disagreements due to the gap between the results and how much the client is actually expecting to get for the price that they are paying.
Overall, it’s a much more efficient model. I wonder why everybody in the industry isn’t using this as their pricing model. I mean yes, sure, it creates a sense of security and predictability when you have clients with a recurring retainer, but it could get messy and hard to manage. It’s healthier for an agency to have milestone-based pricing rather than a messy process with unsatisfied customers.
A true MVP for such a simple templatable concept would be under $2k and could be any template and probably best outside of Bubble like in a Wix / Weebly etc (which would come with one of the post MVP features of coupons and referrals). After demonstrating that there is a market for such a product, it can be rebuilt in Bubble with all the bells and whistles.
So you believe a P2P marketplace should be a $10,000 MVP but do not understand what substantial work is required if not working with PHI? It would take more development to implement just one of the features needed for a true MVP—calculating available hours overlap between patients and all aides within the aide geography accepted distance—than the entire P2P market.
So is the takeaway that your flat-rate MVP only accepts projects w/ minimal dev projects and charge 10k for those project MVPs that should be a lot less than that while throwing shade at any MVP that costs more than 10k despite the fact that its an apples-to-oranges comparison?
Of course not - you’re taking a very naive approach. What I think should be a $10K MVP isn’t at all relevant - all I care about is providing a fair value proposition that rewards amyself for good work and offers compelling value to a new client. Different developers will choose very different price points, that’s kind of a given. Someone in Indonesia might be willing to do this for $2k… and that’s fine.
Again, none of that is what I’ve said. I accept any project (that’s within Bubble’s scope) and throw as much into those project scopes as I’m willing to take on for that amount. There will be small edge cases that require obscene amounts of development for just an MVP, at which point I can change the pricing or just reject the project, but that’s the same for any model of development… That said, the vast majority of projects, I know that I can build it for $10K and nothing more. You’re getting yourself a bit muddled up because $10K is not necessarily the ‘right’ amount for an MVP and I’ve never said as such. It’s what I’m willing to do it for. Someone else might do it for $50K, someone might do it for $2K. That’s just how the world works.
I’m not a beacon of knowledge telling developers exactly how much to charge and how much ought to be in an MVP. This post is a guide to get developers thinking about lean and flexible development that matches their client’s lean processes. If you can do the same thing for just $2K, put your money where your mouth is and go for it.
Thank you @grimlyanin100 
Most likely it’s because large agencies necessarily become too process orientated. Company bureaucracy stifles the charm and convenience of something like this.
Here comes the design in Bubble vs design in Figma debate 
I would still say that a substantial segment of developers have started using Bubble and other low-code tools such as FlutterFlow and Softr to build applications. According to this article published about 3 months ago, Bubble has over 1.6 million users; combine that with the user bases of the other low-code tools, and you will get more than enough people to form a workforce for a new branch in the app development industry. As far as the demand goes, there are more and more people who understand the value of low-code development and are shifting their preferences toward building on engines like Bubble.
Looks like after all low-code is the future and it’s only a matter of time for the general application development industry to adapt to new methods and technologies.
To conclude this, I have a question for you. You mentioned that others have tried the pricing model proposed by George earlier and that it did not work well for them. Do you happen to have any examples? Would love to learn more about that and expand my horizons.
Agreed on true MVP; I was merely referencing my clumsy definition above: “BUT let’s keep in mind that the point of an MVP is to test assumptions and hypotheses related to the product’s value prop.”
@NigelG Do you prefer to talk about preotyping because of all the noise out there about MVPs or do you distinguish preotyping from MVPs? If the second option can you share with us how you distinguish the two?
I had. It became difficult to impossible to actually establish an Agency and scale it, or at least establish a high quality and credible Agency. Working with that approach on your own, may be fine, and it was, but that too also came with struggles.
Issues of building an Agency and scale it:
- Need to have full time employees, not part time freelancers that you call on some of the time. This makes it very difficult to have enough freelancers you call on some of the time to ensure you have enough man power to satisfy all of your clients needs when they arise. To truly satisfy all of your clients needs when they arise, they need to have a dedicated developer, and until you have enough clients on a monthly subscription plan, you likely don’t have enough money to pay the full time dedicated developer. I ran into issues having enough freelancers available when I needed, and I didn’t have enough money to pay myself and a full time developer, so I got stuck in the catch 22 of bringing on more clients and bringing on a full time staff member. Mostly because once you have built the app, and the user jumps onto a subscription for monthly development services, and the client no longer requires more feature adds and jumps off the monthly subscription, you realize you do not have MRR and that you do not have a way to project earnings and growth, so you do not have a way of managing your expenses (ie: salaries) properly.
Of course, you can avoid this by having a rolodex full of very talented freelancers and always have somebody available for your client when you need them, but because the world is the way it is and people are the way they are, you will likely also be needing to constantly update that rolodex as people get busy, change careers or start their own agencies.
- Working on your own: It became difficult to manage my time to know if I have enough time available to take on a new project because it was difficult to project the amount of time my subscription based clients would require for any given month. I had multiple months where there was too much work and I overloaded myself and others when I over-estimated the demand of subscribers and had less income.
Having a subscription service for development work is not the same as having a subscription based SaaS. With a SaaS you have true MRR and an ability to scale because the expectation is that with each new client of the SaaS there is not much more that needs to be done to service that client except potentially investing into more computing power, and the concept is happy SaaS subscribers stay and so you can more reliably predict your MRR and manage your expenses to be in line with needs. With a subscription based development service, where clients can opt in and out on monthly basis, you do not have MRR and you do not have a model in which you can continuously expand your client base without a need to continuously expand your resources (ie: developers).
I did this for about 5-6 months before I figured it not the way in which I wanted to work and I switched to the approach of treating all past clients who want continuous development services the same way I treat new clients. We meet, discuss their needs, and I put them into my working queue and I get their development needs met, when I have the time to complete them. This way I can manage my workload so all my clients can be as satisfied with my work as possible, I can manage my income properly and I can more easily work with freelancers if I have a need because my clients are on a queue and I typically have a 2-4 week wait, so I would have 2 weeks on average to find a freelancer to do the work and go over all the details with them about the project to ensure they are capable. There are still problems there as working with freelancers, there are not that many who are good enough, reliable enough, trustworthy enough or cost only so much so as I can still make a profit for my efforts. I’d really like to find a way to employ full time developers, rather than work with freelancers, and that likely won’t happen until I team up with another developer.
Maybe find some developers to team up with. Most of the successful Bubble agencies/education platforms are collaborations between early adopters. Some of them may use a similar model to what was presented by George as well as various other more traditional models.
I think the best thing to take from the model presented was to know your worth and only take on projects you think are worth your time. From the discussions it sounds like George isolated his as $10K.
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Yeah, completely agree. Right now I need 1.5 developers. A little too much for just me to do sustainably, but not quite enough to hire another person full time. A tricky spot because I want to work with new clients, but can’t work with new clients until I get another developer. And can’t get another developer until I have enough clients…
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Thanks for sharing. To show my appreciation I won’t judge you for your “archetypes” usage 
I have not seen anyone use the word Rolodex in a loonnggg time.
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Sounds like a good idea. What would be your suggestions when it comes to finding good developers to team up with without going through endless iterations in a search of a partnership that actually works?
So, essentially, you are looking for someone to manage your existing client work in order for you to focus on new customer acquisition?
I’m looking for someone to work with new clients so that I don’t have to turn some clients down. I’m still developing haha, just need more hands on deck to manage the growth in client numbers.
Ok, makes sense. Are you still considering new applications? I recently submitted my application too, but I wasn’t sure if you are still looking for someone or you already found a dev.
Yeah, I’m getting round to it. Fortunately only like 20% of people followed the instructions which helps me filter down a lot!
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Really depends on your situation. Maybe go to some local meetups for Bubble developers, or create some relationships via Forum or other channels.
It is kind of like dating, or finding a co-founder for any other type of business.
I really like the idea of a fixed-price MVP for it’s clarity!
However, the subscription model seems a bit less straightforward. I understand that it’s not about providing a full-time dedicated developer for just $1K (with Essentials subscription), but I’m curious how many working hours can a client expect on average?
This got me thinking about offering an alternative solution: packages of working hours (e.g., 24 hours for $3.5K or 40 hours for $5K) for clients who have quite a backlog and they would prefer to make it all in a sprint, not feature by feature. This approach also might encourage clients to bundle their requests, ultimately resulting in less project switching for developers, fewer errors, and increased productivity. What do you think about this idea?
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I just detest charging hourly. It punishes me for being efficient. I can tell a client I’ll charge $120 and be twice as efficient as a $60 developer but anecdotally they always choose the $60 developer because in their eyes all hours are equal.
The sprint approach is reasonable and does allow you to maximise efficiency. Trouble is, I don’t think you can offer subscriptions and a sprint because it just gets confusing. With a sprint clients can’t easily get the minor changes done and with a subscription there’s the potential that they could get it done quicker with a sprint, so pros and cons to both!