Understanding the Challenges of Developing a startup Project Without Adequate Expertise

In the dynamic world of startups, it’s not uncommon for developers to find themselves immersed in projects with limited resources and knowledge. Recently, I encountered a situation that sheds light on the potential pitfalls of working on a product built without thorough planning or technical competence—a scenario worth reflecting upon for professionals navigating early-stage development.

The Context

I was approached for a development role by a team of two individuals. Their startup was in a precarious financial position, having exhausted capital reserves just before launch. They offered me a compensation package below market rate—initially, only half of what I requested—with the promise of salary increases once customer traction was achieved. Despite the modest compensation, I accepted due to immediate financial needs, though I remained cautious and continued seeking other opportunities.

An explicit concern they expressed was their difficulty retaining developers, citing issues with developers “ghosting” them. This raised an initial red flag about project stability and management.

Project State and Technical Assessment

The company’s website was online, visually appealing on desktop browsers, yet lacked responsiveness for mobile devices. Diving into their GitHub repository revealed further issues:

• Predominantly raw JavaScript, with minimal tooling or modern frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular.
• Sparse version control practices—only one closed pull request, and main branch commits without pull requests.
• Absence of automated workflows; no CI/CD pipelines or GitHub Actions.
• No unit tests or quality assurance mechanisms.
• Deployment was manual, simply copying files to a hosting provider (Hostinger), with no formal deployment process.
• The frontend was handcrafted rather than generated through modern build tools, leading to quick setup but likely poor maintainability.
• The backend and database structure were equally rudimentary, with 47 database models—indicating a potentially complex data schema—but no evidence of optimized interactions or proper data management practices.

Technical and Project Management Concerns

Questions about their development approach highlighted a significant lack of structured processes:

• Frameworks or libraries used remain unclear, with responses suggesting ignorance (“I won’t be able to tell you”).
• Version control and deployment strategies are informal—merging branch-to-main without pull requests, manual deployment.
• Testing is virtually nonexistent, raising risks of bugs and unstable features upon deployment.
• The backend instability, described as crashing intermittently, indicates fragile infrastructure lacking resilience or monitoring.

Their candid admission that the project is “fairly broken,” coupled with suggestions to “refactor once deployed or