The missing step for non-tech founders before speaking to developers.

Logo complete, business name registered, domain and marketing website setup. Time and time again, a budding new founder approaches me fresh out of an accelerator program seeking quotes for their latest start-up.

The conversation usually begins with the founder pitching me their product attempting to sell me into their vision of what their product will be. Following this I find myself asking the founder if they have prepared a list of Functional Requirements for their product. This is where the talking seems to pause, was it not enough to explain the idea?

Functional requirements define the basic system behavior. Essentially, they are what the system does or must not do, and can be thought of in terms of how the system responds to inputs. This can and should contain basic tasks such as 'A user can login to my website'

But why go to all this trouble when developers already do this? I have seen many quotes from large and small development firms and one thing that seems to be a common trend is that when a founder fails to specifically highlight their requirements, they’re essentially giving the developer(s) a blank cheque. Imagine approaching a building company to build a house, telling them about the house and then letting the company decide what the requirements are based on that initial discussion.

So how does a non-technical founder go about writing functional requirements for their application?

I would advise writing them down in this form:

• As a [WHO] I am able to [WHAT] so that I can [WHY]

For instance:

• As a USER I am able to LOGIN TO THE WEBSITE so I can VIEW MY HOMEPAGE.

This is just the beginning of the process to create a fully-fledged list of functional requirements. Even a list of requirements like above, expanded over time presents two main benefits.

1. Competitive Quotes - If you wish to seek multiple quotes for the build of your application (Everyone should). Then giving each development firm the same set of requirements can go a long way in helping establish a clear and concise quote.
   

2. Greater Understanding - Have you thought about all the different tasks your application will need to perform? Login / Register, Email, Password Reset. These basic tasks are often assumed by developers and founders alike but it is always important to have an understanding that they are functions that someone needs to build into your application.

Completing a set of functional requirements should be a task undertaken over a number of weeks, perhaps even during the initial establishment and validation of the start-up. In undertaking this task prior to contacting a developer, a non-technical founder greatly increases their ability to establish exactly the product they want created.