A first-person account of building MAXION in under eleven months as a non-technical founder.
The biggest regret: hiring three outside agencies to build the live product. Without technical expertise in-house the work needed expensive restructuring later, and the agencies optimised for hitting deadlines rather than for anything that had to scale — at one point billing £2,000 for a reporting feature already inside the agreed scope.
The advice that follows is practical: bring the team in-house and give them equity so the incentives line up, hire a technical advisor early, tie contracts to milestones, and ask for a working demo every week.
