By Gaida Zirkelbach
Ask any technology or Internet entrepreneur and they’ll tell
you that working with good developers/programmers is crucial to the success of
their business. After all, developers
make a business plan come to life. Any seasoned entrepreneur will also tell you
that avoiding mistakes when contracting with a developer is almost as important
as the quality of the developer’s work.
These legal mistakes can, in many cases, make or break a business.
A well-known example of these costly legal mistakes is the dispute between Mark Zuckerberg, programming prodigy and CEO of Facebook, and his former classmates, who claimed that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them. It took years of lawsuits, millions in legal fees and a $65 million dollar settlement to resolve their dispute. Clearly, in hindsight, when compared to the time, effort, money and sleepless nights wasted in a legal dispute, investing a little time, effort and funds into a quality development agreement is a no brainer. Regrettably, in the rush and often bootstrapping nature of getting an idea off the ground, a quality development agreement is often either overlooked or purposely suppressed by naiveté and wishful thinking.
Whenever I work with an entrepreneur looking to contract with a developer, I make sure that we all agree on the answers to a few simple, but crucial questions. To avoid problems down the road, a quality development agreement will include the answers to these questions, and pass the “sixth grader test.” In other words, a sixth grader should be able to read the agreement and answer these questions:
- 1. Who owns what? In most cases, the entrepreneur should clearly have ownership over deliverables created. Often times, however, developers want to retain ownership in certain basic “tools” or “building blocks” used. Because of this, it can be tricky to clearly state what aspects of deliverables are owned by the entrepreneur and what aspects are retained by the developer.