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Kyle Hankins, CTO and co-founder of Bytewhisper Security, thought he’d hit the jackpot.
The engineer he interviewed knew the stack inside and out. Clean code samples. Great communication. References that checked out.
But during the hiring process, something felt off. The candidate aced the interview on Zoom until Bytewhisper’s deepfake detection technology flagged him as a fake. Hankins wasn’t alone.
Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO of Pindrop Security Solutions, faced the same issue with a remote engineering hire.
Matt Moynahan, CEO of GetReal Security, has also warned publicly about similar incidents.
These leaders realized how easy it is for startups to fall for candidates who look perfect on paper but turn out to be complete risks in execution.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
CB Insights looked at 483 startup failures and found that 92% of startups fail.
But nearly 37% of those failures trace back to technical team issues. Bad devs don’t just waste your money. They wreck your timeline. They wreck your reputation. They ruin your chances of raising the next round.
In 2025, with AI raising expectations and funding harder to get, one bad hire can sink your company.
Here’s what you might be going through right now:
“My app works in demos, but crashes under load.”
“Features are overlapping, missing, or delayed.”
“The person I trusted isn’t available when I need them — or avoids calls or meetings.”
“I keep paying for code that feels brittle or untested.”
“Investors are asking for stable demos, but what I have isn’t ready.”
By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to spot these startup killers before they destroy everything you’ve built.
Bad development work wastes your budget. Worse: it destroys value you hoped to build.
A Reddit post titled “I wasted $50,000 building my startup…” tells how a non-technical founder first hired a reliable Pakistani web dev.
Then switched to an agency promising faster, more polished work. The agency failed to prioritize the project. The original dev was rehired.
The MVP is now close. But the extra cost, time, and loss of trust burned months of runway.
Time lost is often more damaging than money lost.
From the same Reddit thread above: what should have taken months became 18 months of stops, rewrites, and confusion. That gap made fundraising harder and downstream features cost more.
A buggy product or missed promises doesn’t just cost users. It costs your credibility.
If people think you can’t deliver quality or be reliable, they won’t bet on you. And once reputation is damaged, repairing it costs more time and money than building from clean foundations.
“Moonlighting” here means working for more than one company at once, without being transparent. Not just freelancing on the side, but taking roles that interfere with availability, quality, and commitment.
Soham Parekh’s case shows how hidden commitments can seem invisible until they cause missed deadlines, conflicting work, or breakdowns. Interviews go great. Post‐hire, things wobble. Tasks lag. Delivery slips.
Founders have reported that when they found out a supposed dedicated dev was actually spread over several projects, things fell apart:
One Reddit thread (r/startups) reports a founder rehired an original dev after a failed agency engagement, noting how much smoother things got when someone was committed and consistent.
This is when someone else (coach, senior person, interview “ringer”) handles interviews or architecture, but the actual work is done by a lower-skill person. Or multiple people, via outsourcing, without you seeing it.
Delayed delivery, low test coverage, mismatched communication often follow.
In a Reddit discussion, a founder said they were misled by excellent interview architecture discussion, but post-hire the code was untested, messy, and the developer avoided difficult questions.
They later realized the interview “senior” was not involved in most delivery. This mismatch cost them trust, time, and forced architecture rewrites.
Some vendors propose big teams with many specialists even when the project doesn’t need them. It looks impressive in proposals. But more people often introduce more complexity, delays, and cost.
A Quora or Reddit case: founder hired a 7-person team (front-end, back-end, UI, UX, DevOps, QA, PM) for what should have been a lean web app.
After auditing, they found only 2-3 people were producing meaningful code; others were blocked, in meetings, or managing tasks that didn’t add value.
Their invoice over 3 months was much more than a small skilled team could have done. The overhead killed speed and cost.
Lean teams force clarity: each person owns something real. Fewer dependencies mean fewer delays. Fewer people to coordinate. Better feedback loops. Faster iteration.
One of the earliest signs that something is wrong: communication slips. Not always obvious at first.
These often mask actual delays or missed scope.
Trust is fragile. When you don’t get clarity, you start micromanaging. Developers feel pressure, hide errors. Communication gets defensive. Small slips become bigger gaps. The project suffers, morale drops.
One founder on Reddit said: after 8 weeks of weekly updates, they realized their dev was showing mockups or UI placeholders rather than working backend features.
They thought they were close to MVP. They weren’t. The mismatch between promised features and deliverables cost them investor interest.
Sometimes you need speed. But if you build too many shortcuts — skip tests, ignore documentation, delay refactoring — debt piles up.
What starts as fast MVP often becomes messy when users increase, traffic rises, or new features are added. The foundation cracks. Changes cost more. Bugs multiply.
One Reddit thread from r/ExperiencedDevs last year tells about a startup that patched and patched their backend until things broke — needing a full rewrite.
Rebuild took 4 months and cost more than what they’d originally spent building the buggy version.
These problems don’t just happen because of bad code or bad luck.
They happen because of what people believe, what they feel, and what they let slide. Understanding the psychology helps you catch issues before they cost you.
If you're non-technical, it’s hard to distinguish polished slides from solid architecture. Portfolios, testimonials, interviews can be impressive even if the underlying code is brittle.
Without enough understanding, you may not notice big risks until they manifest. And by then, time and money are lost.
When runway is short, or investors expect something fast, founders cut corners. They may hire quickly without vetting, skip documentation, postpone testing. The urgency feels real. But it often causes problems later.
Going with the cheapest option feels like winning up front. But then “cheap” often means under-resourced, under-experienced, or overpromised.
Founders often think they can fix things later. Many Reddit threads from 2024-2025 reflect regret over choosing low bids only to face delays, poor code, or needing replacement.
People tend to assume past performance equals future result. But portfolios often highlight wins, not the breakdowns.
Testimonials often mask behind what was promised vs delivered. A dev may have built cool side projects but under-deliver in critical parts of your product.
You want to trust. But trust without verification leads to blind spots.
Fix: demand smaller proofs early. Insist on working features over perfect promises.
Here are concrete tools and processes you can use to prevent the $500K mistake. These help you ensure the problems above don’t take root.
Before hiring or contracting:
Startups often skip these early, thinking contracts are overhead. They aren’t.
Once you work together, don’t assume everything will always go well.
Over-communication is often seen as annoying, but in dev partnerships, it’s essential.
When communication is strong, you catch small issues before they become disasters. Teams stay aligned. Trust builds. Scope creep is controlled.
You don’t want just a developer. You want a partner who understands your product, cares about quality, and protects your interests.
Before signing anything, consider asking:
1. Who will write the code? Can I meet the person(s) directly?
2. Are they working on other projects? What’s their availability?
3. What if someone stops contributing or leaves? What’s the replacement process?
4. Can I see code from similar past projects? How did they deal with bugs, scaling, security?
5. How will ownership of code, IP, and confidentiality be handled?
6. What metrics will you report (bugs, uptime, speed, quality) and how often?
7. What is the schedule of deliverables and demos?
To keep things healthy:
epicX was founded to avoid exactly the kind of disasters we’ve been talking about. Here’s how:
We use a dedicated team model. The same people work through your product phases. You don’t get rotating faces or hidden handovers. Consistency matters.
To stay aligned, we commit to:
We also support escalation: urgent issues can be flagged, problems discussed early.
Mandatory demos every two weeks mean you see working software, not presentations. If something’s off, you discover early.
Quality isn't an afterthought. It is baked in.
And because we believe in continuous improvement, we optimize team skills and structures as your needs grow.
You’ve seen how real founders get burned by bad dev partnerships. You’ve read real threads, real mistakes, real costs. But you also now have a map: red flags, psychology, prevention, partnership.
Here’s what to do right now:
The difference between a startup that struggles and one that succeeds often isn't the idea. It’s who builds it and how.
Don’t let the $500K mistake be your path. Learn, inspect, act. You deserve a dev team that doesn’t just build your idea, they protect it.
