18 pages of questions from a Libyan founder, answered on camera

Hi, it's Sharan.

Last week's issue was a founder's checklist, 324 items long. One of the replies was an 18-page document from Muhammad, a founder in Libya who wants to launch a delivery platform there. His own questions, top to bottom.

So I recorded the answers. About 40 minutes, on camera, with the demo running so you can watch an order go from the customer app to the store to the rider and back. The full video is here.

A few answers are worth pulling out, because they're the ones most people buying a platform never get straight.

Everything is included. Customer app, rider app, store app, vendor and admin dashboards, the API, the full back end source. The front end is already open source, so you can read it before you pay a cent.

Some things aren't there, or are only partly there. Proof of delivery is a customization. Card refunds go through your payment gateway, not the platform; the in-app wallet handles the rest. Priority orders and multi-order batching are partial. A Libyan payment gateway is custom work, somewhere between $500 and $1,000. The database is NoSQL, not Postgres. I said all of that on camera, because a no you hear before you buy is cheaper than one you find after.

Running costs, since he asked for them separately. Roughly $100 a month on AWS at 10 to 15 thousand users. Google Maps gives $300 of credit a month, which is usually enough. Stripe takes about 3 percent. Apple charges $99 a year, Google $25 once. Updates run six months, and the renewal is a small fraction of the package price.

And the exit question, which I think is the most important one he asked. If we disappeared tomorrow, who owns the data, and can he keep operating? He does, and yes. That's the reason the whole thing is built the way it is.

The easy way to handle an 18-page questionnaire is a private call where every answer bends a little toward yes. I'd rather answer once, in public, partials included, and let the next founder use the same answers.

So the question I'd put to any vendor before you sign: which items on my list are a no? If they can't name one, they haven't read your list.

Watch the full Q&A here. If your own list has a question the video misses, reply and tell me, and I'll cover it in a future issue.

And if you're new here and want to see the platform itself, it's all at enatega.com.

Talk soon, Sharan