15 Questions to Ask Before Paying for App Development

He joined the Zoom call pissed off.

Not at us — at himself.

“Three months ago, we hired a dev agency. Found them on Clutch. Great proposal, solid design, timeline, all clean. MVP for $45K. We gave them a brief. They started building. The demo looked fine. But now that it’s almost done… I don’t know why we built any of this.”

We’ve heard versions of this story a dozen times. But this one stuck. The founder was a sharp ex-COO — no tech background, but deep in operations and org strategy. The idea? A B2B platform to gather employee feedback inside remote teams. Sounds good on paper.

What they built?

• Fully custom onboarding
• Gamification logic
• Stripe subscription
• Three dashboards
• …and not a single feature tied to ROI or user demand.

“I thought they’d guide us toward what matters. I figured that’s what you pay for, right? But we didn’t test anything. We didn’t ask real users. We just… built what sounded nice.”

He’s not dumb. He’s not lazy. He just skipped a step that most first-time founders skip:

They don’t ask the hard questions early — because no one tells them what those questions are. That’s what this article is. We’re not sharing theory. We’re sharing lived experience — ours and our clients.

(Yes, names and details changed. But the mistakes? 100% real.)

Here are the 15 questions you must ask before paying a single dollar to a dev team. Not because it’s the “right” way. Because skipping them can cost you 6 months and $60K — and we’d rather you avoid that.

(P.S. If you want a shortcut — our App Cost Calculator can help you map out your MVP scope, tech stack, and budget in under 3 minutes — before you even talk to a dev team.)

How to Choose the Right App Development Agency (Before You Waste $50K)

We once worked with a founder who had a clear vision — or so he thought: “We’re building a social app for travelers who want to connect with locals.” Cool idea, right? Fun concept, slick brand. But when we dug in, here’s what we found:

• There was no real metric of success beyond “grow users”
• There was no definition of who those users really were
• And no one on the team had validated how often “travelers” even want to meet locals (turns out: rarely — unless you’re a backpacker with no itinerary)

Six months later, the product was live. And the users? Well… they were confused. Who was this for again?

Lesson: If you don’t define the job your app is hired to do — nobody’s gonna show up for work.

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Question 1: What is your app’s primary goal?

Forget “making the world better.” Think in outcomes. What do users get out of this?

Examples:

• Save them time? → “Plan a workout in 3 minutes instead of 20”
• Help them earn? → “Track freelance income across platforms”
• Reduce hassle? → “Auto-scan receipts into accounting software”

If you can’t measure the outcome, it’s probably not a real goal.

Phrase your goal as a before/after state. E.g., “Before this app: scattered info, wasted time. After: all logistics in one place, booked in 2 taps.”

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Question 2: Who exactly is this for?

If you say “millennials” or “CEOs” — you’re already off track. A strong target audience isn’t demographic — it’s behavioral.

Better:

• “Small business owners with 1–3 employees who use WhatsApp for client communication”
• “Remote developers who invoice multiple clients monthly and hate Excel”
• “Parents with toddlers who want screen-free activities on the go”

The more specific your mental picture, the easier it is to design around them, not your ego.

Founder's Exercise (5 min)

1. Write your app’s value in one sentence.
2. Now cross out anything generic: “users,” “connect,” “engage,” “manage.”
3. Rewrite it using a real pain and a real person.

“Helps remote team managers know which junior devs are stuck — without asking.” Not: “Helps teams collaborate better.”

What happens when you skip this?

You’ll build an app that “feels useful” to you — and nobody else. You’ll pitch investors with “a market of 3 billion users” — and no retention. You’ll wonder why feedback is polite but adoption is silent. Don’t guess. Define the goal. Name the user. Build for them.

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Question 3: Choosing a platform and stack

A founder came to us last year — ex-agency owner, experienced in operations, just closed a small angel round. His idea? A time-tracking app for freelancers that automatically calculates how much they’re owed based on the hours they log. Smart. Niche. Clear use case.

He had about $35K to spend, a Figma prototype, and a freelance dev ready to start. “I want the app to be available on iOS, Android, and web,” he said. “I just don’t want to block anyone out. Some people use desktops, others are on Android. And I want to make a good first impression.”

It sounded logical. Generous, even. But when we asked a few simple questions:

• “How many users do you have right now?”
• “Which platform do you personally use?”
• “Where do you think users will interact with this the most?”

He paused. “I don’t have users yet — maybe 30 to 40 after launch. I use an iPhone. I guess most freelancers would probably log time on their phones.”

That’s when it clicked for him: He was about to triple the scope of his MVP — for an audience he hadn’t even met yet.

Want to make smarter tech choices from the start? Check our MVP development cost breakdown and startup app launch playbook.

The Trap: Overbuilding for Invisible Users

This happens all the time. Founders — especially smart, well-meaning ones — assume they’re being user-friendly by launching on every platform. But what they’re really doing is spreading themselves thin before they’ve even validated demand. Building for iOS, Android, and Web at the same time adds:

• 30–50% more dev time
• Thousands in extra QA, design, and testing
• And zero extra certainty that anyone will care

You end up with three half-baked apps instead of one that actually works.

What He Did Instead

We helped him scope it down:

• Mobile only (iOS), built with Flutter to leave the door open for Android later
• Simple admin panel on Firebase for internal use
• Core feature set: log time, generate invoice, send it

He launched in 6 weeks. Got 50 freelancers testing it. They gave feedback. Two features got cut. One new one got added. And when Android users asked for access — he had proof it was worth building.

So What Should You Do?

Ask yourself these two things:

1. Where is your user most likely to act?

• B2B platform? → Probably desktop
• On-the-go consumer task? → Definitely mobile
• Payment-heavy use case? → iOS converts better early on
• Internal tool? → Admin-only Web works fine

Choose one platform. Commit to it. Build deep, not wide.

2. What do you actually need to learn right now?

At MVP stage, your goal isn’t to impress investors with multi-platform reach. Your goal is to find out:

• Do users get the value?
• Do they come back?
• Do they tell someone else?

You don’t need three apps to answer those questions. You need one that works.

Tech Tips (For Non-Technical Founders)

• Flutter: great for mobile MVPs with cross-platform potential
• Firebase: fast backend, user auth, notifications
• Stripe: easy payments
• Supabase: open-source Firebase alternative
• No admin panel? Use Google Sheets or Airtable. Seriously.

Don’t build complexity for the sake of “being real.” Build to test the core loop.

❌ Mistakes Founders Regret Later

• Building on iOS and Android separately “just in case”
• Paying for a full web app no one asked for
• Choosing frameworks their team doesn’t know
• Custom-coding backends when Firebase would’ve worked fine
• Assuming “if we support everyone, someone will stay”

They won’t. They’ll bounce.

Your first platform is not a technical decision.

It’s a business filter.

The clearer your focus, the faster you’ll ship — and the cheaper it’ll be to find out if anyone cares.

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What Features Actually Matter — and What to Cut Without Regret

One of the most common phrases we hear from first-time founders: “We’re just building an MVP — but we want it to include basic chat, admin tools, push notifications, analytics, payment integration, onboarding, feedback system, and dark mode.”

The result? The app takes 6 months. The budget triples. So let’s fix this.

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Question 5: What is the one core action

Before you define “features,” define success. What is the one thing they should do that makes them go: “Okay. This is actually useful.”

Examples:

• “Logged my first invoice and saw how much I’m owed this month”
• “Scheduled a fitness class in under 30 seconds”
• “Matched with 3 potential mentors”
• “Saved $22 by switching a subscription”

If you don’t have this core loop nailed, no feature — not even AI or gamification — will make your app stick. Don’t build tools. Build outcomes.

How to Find Your Must-Have Features

Forget brainstorming feature ideas. Instead, write down:

• The user’s current pain
• The desired state after using your app
• The minimum steps needed to get them there

Only build what’s required to make that change happen. Everything else? Park it.

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Question 6: What’s unique about your product?

If your app doesn’t do something surprisingly well or differently, it’s a commodity. Ask yourself:

• Is it the way you visualize data?
• A faster way to complete a task?
• A niche workflow no one has touched?

🚫 Don’t confuse “we have dark mode” or “we integrated Stripe” with innovation. Your differentiator might not even be a feature — it could be the experience, the framing, the timing.

The Founder's Trap: Building for Edge Cases

Every extra feature sounds like it might help:

• “Let’s add chat in case they want to talk.”
• “Let’s build an admin panel from day one.”
• “What if they want to filter by tags?”

The truth is: until you know what your users really care about, you’re just guessing. And guesswork gets expensive fast.

Founder Framework: The 3-Box Sort

Take every feature idea and put it into one of these:

Tip: You can always add features. You can’t get burned time and money back.

A Real Founder Quote (Ouch Edition)

“We spent two months building push notifications and user tagging. Then realized… our users weren’t even making it past the first screen.” Don’t make it beautiful if it’s not useful yet. Don’t make it powerful if it’s not used.

Your job is not to build “as many features as possible.“ It’s to reduce time-to-value — the time it takes for a new user to feel a result. Once you nail that, users will ask you what to build next.

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How Much Does a Mobile App MVP Cost — and Why Timelines Always Slip

We worked with a founder — ex-consultant, super sharp, very data-driven. He had $50K from a small friends & family round, and a clear vision for his B2B app: “Let operations managers manage their workflows without ever opening Excel again.” His plan?

• Spend $45K on the MVP
• Launch in 10 weeks
• Get a few early clients
• Raise a seed round

It looked good on paper. Until week 12 came and went — and the app still wasn’t usable.

Turns out:

• 15% of the budget went to scope creep: “Can we just add…”
• 20% went to things no user ever clicked
• 0% was saved for fixes, retention, or onboarding

And because everything went into “the build,” he had nothing left for what happens after people touch the product. He didn’t overspend. He just budgeted like everything would go according to plan. Which it never does. Get a real-world breakdown of MVP prices — and learn how smart founders avoid budget traps before they even start.

So, how do you avoid that?

Forget “how much will it cost?” Start with: “How do I not get stuck after v1?” Let’s break it down.

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Question 7: What’s your real budget — not just your number?

Your budget is not “the amount you’re willing to spend.” It’s the amount you can afford to lose without killing the business. Let’s say you have $40K. If you spend all of it on the first build, here’s what you won’t have money for:

• Fixing onboarding when retention sucks
• Rewriting a flow that no one finishes
• Paying users to test it
• Shipping a 2.0 before investors ghost you

So what do smart founders do? They don’t just set a number — they break it into missions.

If you only build and don’t learn, the second version won’t exist.

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Question 8: What’s your timeline — and what happens if you miss it?

Most founders don’t need a product. They need a moment to show something to investors, users, or partners. That moment has a date: demo day, pitch, grant deadline, marketing push. And when you say “Q3” or “10 weeks,” ask yourself:

• “What needs to be working by that day?”
• “What will we cut if we’re 2 weeks behind?”
• “What can we fake or prototype if needed?”

This isn’t pessimism. It’s survival. We had a founder aiming for a fintech conference in 2 months. Instead of trying to finish the whole product, he built one flawless flow: “User signs in, connects their bank, gets a report in 3 clicks.”

That’s what he demoed. And that’s what got him a $120K pre-seed.

The Reality Most Founders Ignore

• Timelines drift. There’s always a bug. Always a dependency.
• Features get messy. What looked small becomes big in sprint 3.
• Your users don’t care about your plans. They care if the thing works.

So give yourself permission to miss the plan — without killing the outcome.

Ballpark Timeline: If You Really Want a Number

These are not quotes. They’re reality checks. And they don’t include what happens after launch.

• Your budget is a roadmap, not a check. Plan for after the build.
• Your timeline is only useful if you know what you’ll cut when it slips.
• Don’t budget for the best-case scenario. Budget for the second version.

Because that’s the version that survives.

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Choosing a Dev Team: Why “Nice” Proposals Often Lead to Expensive Regret

You meet a team. They’re responsive. Friendly. Their proposal is neat, full of icons and UI mockups. You don’t fully understand the technical bits, but they seem excited, and you feel relieved:

“Finally — someone who gets it. I don’t have to explain every little thing.”

Six weeks later, you're exhausted. They’ve built what you asked for. But users aren’t using it. You realize no one ever asked why you wanted a feature. No one ever said, “That’s a bad idea.”

They just said “Sure. We’ll add it.” And now you’re stuck with an MVP that looks polished — but doesn't solve the core problem.

You didn’t hire developers. You hired a mirror.

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Question 9: What criteria matter most when evaluating developers?

The best teams don’t nod and smile. They slow you down. They dig. They rephrase your ideas until they hit something solid.

They say things like:

• “I’m not sure that feature fits your first release.”
• “Can we prototype this before committing dev time?”
• “What’s your user doing before they open this app?”

It feels frustrating at first — but that’s the cost of thinking before building.

A Founder Story We Still Use in Workshops

A non-technical founder came to us after burning $35K on a sleek MVP. Beautiful interface. Zero traction. When we opened the spec file from his previous team, it was… a list. A literal list of requested features, written by the founder himself, unchecked by anyone.

“I thought if I was clear, they’d deliver. They did. But I didn’t know I was wrong.”

His biggest regret? Not hiring someone who would push back.

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Question 10: How do you choose the right development team?

Forget “full-stack.” Forget “fast turnaround.” Forget whether they have a designer on staff. Ask:

• Do they question your assumptions?
• Do they protect the roadmap, not just fulfill it?
• Have they built something where retention mattered?
• Can they explain what not to do — and why?

One founder we respect asks every team he interviews: “What’s the riskiest part of building this, and how would you de-risk it?”

You learn more in 60 seconds than in a 30-page proposal.

Quick Ways to Spot a Shallow Team

• They offer a fixed price without a real discovery session
• They say “everything is possible” before hearing your priorities
• They talk more about tools than tradeoffs
• They never mention post-launch

If they don’t bring up retention, iteration, or failure modes — they’re not thinking like partners. They’re thinking like freelancers who want to get paid and move on.

What It Feels Like When You Choose Right

You might not agree on everything. You’ll probably get challenged more than you expected. You won’t always hear what you want.

But you’ll leave every call feeling like someone is watching your blind spots — not just your budget. Don’t hire developers who agree with you.

Hire the ones who make your idea better before they touch a single line of code. You’re not looking for “smooth.” You’re looking for someone who keeps your $30K from turning into a pretty product no one opens.

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Quality & Testing: The Moment You Realize You’ve Been the QA All Along

A few days before launch, we got this message from a founder: “I opened the app this morning and the ‘Confirm Booking’ button does… nothing. I thought QA was included?” It was.

But here’s the part no one tells you early on: QA doesn’t mean your app will be bug-free. It means someone — ideally not you — has a process to catch issues before they reach your users.

In his case, there was no process. Just a developer clicking through features and saying, “Looks good.” No test plan. No devices checked. No user simulation. And, apparently, no one noticed that the most important button in the product didn’t work.

The Question You Need to Ask Early

“How will the app be tested — exactly? Not in theory, in practice.” Don’t accept “We’ll test everything” as an answer. That’s not a plan. That’s a placeholder.

What Happens When There’s No Real QA

You launch thinking:

• It looks clean
• It loads fast
• Your team said, “All done!”

But users experience:

• Logins failing on older Android
• A form that doesn’t save
• A flow that dead-ends with no error
• Or just… crashing on launch

And suddenly, you’re fixing the plane while it’s flying. You go from CEO to bug tracker. From product visionary to tech support. It’s not a meltdown. It’s worse — it’s slow bleed. You lose trust one review at a time.

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Question 11: So What Does Real QA Look Like for a Startup?

You don’t need a full-time QA team. But you do need structure. Here’s what we do on most lean MVPs:

1. Test Plan for Core Flows — list what’s critical (login, payment, onboarding, etc.)
2. Real Devices — we test across iOS + Android versions (emulators miss stuff)
3. Manual Stress Test — we try to break the app like a chaotic user would
4. Regression Check — after any fix, we make sure we didn’t break something else
5. Crash Monitor — Firebase Crashlytics catches crashes in real-time post-launch
6. Bug Tracker — we log everything in Linear or Jira, with clear priorities

And we always have someone who isn’t a developer test the product. Why? Because devs don’t click like users do. They know too much.

🙋🏻‍♂️ Another Question to Ask Your Team

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Question 12: Who’s responsible for QA — and how will we know something’s broken?

Look for signs they take this seriously:

• Are they testing across devices?
• Are they simulating real-world behaviors?
• Do they track bugs in a structured system?
• Do they let you review and prioritize fixes?

If not — you are the process. And that’s a full-time job you didn’t plan for.

One Founder’s QA Wake-Up Call

A founder once launched a beta without structured QA. He assumed the dev team handled it. “It worked great on their phone. And mine. Then we opened it up to 200 users… and the app crashed 40 times in 3 days.” Turns out 60% of his users were on an OS the team never tested. They lost 40% of beta signups in the first week. He spent the next month apologizing instead of iterating.

✅ Founder Takeaway

Your MVP doesn’t need to be perfect. But it needs to be stable. And stability doesn’t happen by chance. It happens by process. So ask early. Ask clearly: “How do you test? What gets tested? Who owns the results?” And never, ever launch without clicking every button like a user who just spilled coffee on their keyboard.

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What Happens After Your App Launches — and How to Avoid the Rookie Mistakes

Question 13: What Happens After Launch — And Who Sticks Around to Handle It?

A founder once called us the week after launch, sounding burnt out: “Users are emailing weird bugs, someone left a 1-star review because the app froze during payment, and I just realized... we never talked about post-launch support.”

This happens all the time. The launch is framed as a finish line. But it’s really the moment when real users start stress-testing everything your dev team built. And if you didn’t ask the right question upfront, you’ll now learn the hard way:

What kind of post-launch support is included — and for how long?

Why This Question Matters

Because without a clear answer, you get vague promises like:

• “We’ll be around if anything breaks.”
• “You can always shoot us an email.”
• “We fix critical bugs, of course.”

But what’s critical to you might not be critical to them.And if it’s not written down, it’s not guaranteed. We’ve seen founders get ghosted 10 days post-launch when a dev shop moved on to another project.

What Support Should Actually Look Like

A solid post-launch plan might include:

• 30 days of bug fixes included
• Access to the same dev team for urgent patches
• A monitoring tool (like Crashlytics) set up to catch failures
• Clear response times (e.g. 24h for blockers)

Better yet, some agencies offer ongoing retainers for:

• Monthly updates
• Minor feature iterations
• User feedback implementation
• Performance tracking

Launch day isn’t victory — it’s Day 1 of the real work. Here's how to survive the brutal first 100 days after your app goes live.

A Founder’s Regret

One founder we worked with launched without post-launch terms. A week later, a major issue appeared: Stripe payments failed randomly for 1 in 20 users. The dev team? Busy on another project. The founder had to hire a new team to reverse-engineer what went wrong. It took 3 weeks. During that time, churn spiked and app store ratings tanked.

What to Ask Before Signing the Contract

• “What happens if we find a bug in the first month?”
• “Who monitors crashes and performance post-launch?”
• “Do you offer a maintenance retainer?”
• “What’s your typical release cycle after go-live?”

Don’t assume support is included.Don’t assume the team that built your app will be available to fix it. Ask. Confirm. Put it in the contract.

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Security & Privacy: The Disaster You Don’t Hear About Until It’s Too Late

A founder we know — sharp, fast-moving guy, ex-consultant — built a health-tracking app for remote workers. They raised $120K pre-seed. Launched quietly to a beta list of 500 users.

Used Google Forms for onboarding (fine), Firebase for backend (smart), and a small Eastern European team to keep it lean. Two weeks after launch, someone ran a simple script that looped password reset requests 500 times in 3 hours. No real damage.

But Gmail flagged them as spam. Push notifications stopped working. Half the users never got their verification emails again. Then came the fun part: One of their angel investors forwarded a message from a user.

“You guys don’t use 2FA? You’re storing medical data. I’m out.” Boom — funding evaporated. Not because of a breach. Because of a lack of questions.

Security gets you past the starting line — but differentiation gets you funded. Here’s the AI features that make investors pay attention.

The Question You Should’ve Asked:

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Question 14: What security and privacy measures are in place to protect users?

Sounds obvious, right? But here’s what really happens: You’re so focused on building the core loop — onboarding, payments, dashboards — that you assume security is just... handled. But it isn’t.

Founders Usually Ask the Wrong Security Questions

They ask:

• “We’re GDPR-compliant, right?”
• “Is this encrypted?”
• “It’s all behind HTTPS?”

These are checkbox questions. They sound smart. But they assume something exists to check. What you really need to ask is:

• Where are we storing PII (personally identifiable information)?
• What happens if a hacker tries 1,000 logins in an hour?
• Are logs anonymized, or can devs read real emails and tokens?
• Can someone intercept an auth token from a public network?
• Who has database access — and how is it tracked?

And most of all: “What’s our plan if something goes wrong?” Because something will go wrong. Eventually.

What Minimal Viable Security Looks Like (MVS, seriously)

Even the leanest MVP should have:

If your app deals with health, money, or minors, add:

• 2FA
• Audit trails
• Legal compliance (HIPAA, PCI DSS, etc.)
• Privacy policy written in plain English

A Founder’s Quote That Still Haunts Me:

“We asked our devs if it was secure. They said yes. But we never asked what ‘secure’ actually meant.”

Two months later, they had to rebuild the entire backend after discovering all password resets were guessable with sequential IDs.

What Not to Do:

• Don’t store emails or phone numbers unencrypted
• Don’t skip access control on internal dashboards (yes, this happens)
• Don’t allow “admin” accounts without 2FA
• Don’t log sensitive data into third-party services by accident (Segment, Bugsnag, etc.)
• Don’t delay writing your privacy policy “until later”

✅ Takeaway for Non-Technical Founders

You don’t need to know how SHA-256 works. But you do need to know:

• What data you collect
• Where it lives
• Who can touch it
• And what happens if it leaks

Ask your team to show you the security flow. Ask them to simulate a failure — what would break, and how fast would they fix it?

And most importantly: “If a user asks, ‘Is my data safe?’ — what do we say?” If the answer is silence — you’ve got a problem.

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Ownership and Legal Stuff: The Part You Regret Skipping Only Once

A founder called us with that classic post-launch tension in his voice: “So, uh… the app’s live, we’re getting users, and now I’m trying to switch to a new dev team. But the agency says I don’t actually own the codebase?”

What? He sent us the contract.

Buried deep in the last page: “Agency retains rights to source code unless otherwise agreed in writing.”

Boom. They held the keys. And they wanted $15,000 for a code handover. He had already paid $50K for development.

But in the eyes of the law? He was leasing a product he thought he owned. What Should You Ask Before Signing Anything?

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Question 15: Who owns the code, designs, and data when the project is over?

Not just in theory. You need it spelled out:

• Do you own the source code?
• Do you own the designs and prototypes?
• Do you own the backend architecture?
• Do you own the data and databases?

If you don’t, they do.

The Hidden Minefield

Even if your main contract looks clean, here’s where founders usually get tripped up:

• Freelancers in the dev team → Was their work-for-hire agreement signed? If not, they own their code.
• Figma files → You might see them, but not own them. No license? No rights.
• Stock icons or fonts → Agency used them? Great. Do you have licenses to reuse them commercially?
• Open-source packages → Some licenses (like GPL) force you to open your entire codebase. Do you even know what they used?

What Happens If You Don’t Ask

• You can’t migrate to a new team without starting from scratch
• You can’t get acquired — due diligence will flag “IP unclear”
• You can't prove your product is yours — and investors will walk

One founder we worked with had to rebuild their entire admin panel from scratch, just because the agency had tied it to their own internal library that wasn’t open for reuse.

What Needs to Be in Your Contract (No Exceptions)

Tip: Ask for all design files, codebases, and documentation as part of final delivery. Don’t wait until it’s urgent.

What We Tell Our Clients

“You’re not paying for an app. You’re buying the rights to use, change, improve, and profit from it however you want.” If you can’t do that — you don’t own the product. You’ve just financed someone else’s asset.