How do I successfully outsource my MVP?

I would like to add a word of caution. Please spend as much time as you can understanding the complexity of your MVP and try to map that to what it should cost to build. Without having a good estimate of how much it should cost you will either spend too little and get extremely sub par results, or spend way more than you should have (more likely scenario) and get barely usable MVP. It's easy for dishonest parties to take advantage of your lack of knowledge and quote you an extremely high figure for what you want to do.

So my recommendation is to find someone with the right technical background that ideally has done many projects that may be similar to your MVP and that can put together for your an overall high level design and give you estimates on how much it would cost to build it based on hours and even tech stack used. They don't have to do the work but it should guide you on your next steps.

> MVPs are my specialization, both full time and freelance. However, besides my own startup, most MVPs become a death march and few survive marketing.

Which site did you use? Is fiver any good for something like this?

> Fiverr is terrible for this. Upwork is okay, if you have experience with project development and management. I would recommend something like Toptal.

How do you protect your idea from being stolen?

> You'll have to sign some kind of agreement that the created product is yours. Consult a lawyer. Copyright covers code and is nearly free. Patents are more work, more cost, but should protect the idea. Generally, it's not worth protecting if you have an advantage.

Outsourcing is something you do when you have a lot of money and want to convert that into code. Like a hundred thousand dollars lying around and no idea where to put it.

Your product will cost you more than you expect and be much longer. One hint of a startup being doomed is when they have profile pics or Facebook login where it's unnecessary. There's a substantial cost to front end, back end, hosting, maintenance. You want to brutally cut out all unnecessary features. Assume that every button will cost you $50-$200. Rounding the images will cost you $50-$200. When you do something, there's the design, development, testing, iteration, project management cost.