tl;dr

• Do it yourself over 2-12 months
• Find a hacker to join for equity
• Use an agency and pay hard cash
• Optimize with the AppFactory

Full Answer

There are four options for someone looking to build an app

1) You can teach yourself how to code and build it yourself

• With no development background this will take at least one year (~1,000 hours of work) to get started on your project
• With some coding experience, you're looking at about six months (~500 hours) to become proficient enough at iOS
• With a heavy technical background, it's more like two months (~200 hours) to become proficient at iOS

2) You can get a technical co-founder

• Founder-dating
• Findyourcofounder.com

There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach:

Advantages

• Because they take equity, technical co-founders are usually cheaper
• They’re deeply invested in the success of your project
• They participate in the strategy of your project

Disadvantages

• Technical co-founders are really hard to find, (read: unicorns)
• Meeting with different potential co-founders takes up a lot of time
• They have a limited skill set -- they’re only one person
• They typically require 30-40% equity commitment

3) You can hire a freelance developer or mobile agency

This approach too, has its advantages and disadvantages. Finding any freelance developer is easy, finding good freelance developers is pretty hard. The same goes with agencies.

Advantages

• Widely available
• Broad range of skill sets-- you can find a freelancer for just about anything. Pivoting from iOS to android? Just hire a new freelancer!

Disadvantages

• Expensive, and they tend to want to increase the price tag by including lots of (unnecessary) features
• Typically, both freelancers and agencies have little-to-no stake in your company’s success
• Difficult to do quality control - you have to learn who you like to work with, and that takes time
• Both agencies and freelancers are typically not designed to work with startups

4) You can hire App Factory

At App Factory, we have created a hybrid approach marrying the advantages of a technical co-founder with the advantages of a mobile agency.

We combine the broad expertise and adaptability of an agency with the cost-effective support of a technical co-founder. This creates our unique ability to execute quickly and efficiently, while aligning your success with our success.

Clients can be as involved as they want to be. Our clients are most satisfied when they are more heavily involved in the Strategy & Design Session and in the bug-testing of the product.

This ensures that the product matches your vision, enables you to quickly learn about your target market, and gives you invaluable product development experience.

We believe every founder should have some understanding how the sausage is made . . . but leave the coding to us.

If you decide to make App Factory your strategic partner, we offer equity discounts for our services. For every 1% equity, we offer a 6% discount on all of our services for the lifetime of your company. The maximum discount is 30%, which can be achieved in exchange for 5% equity.

Our equity exchange model is completely optional. About 70% of our clients take advantage of this option.

The scope of the project depends on the complexity of the app. Is this a social media app, or a simple utility app?

At AppFactory, we try to eliminate optional, expensive features for an MVP. As a result, our MVPs for startups typically fall in the $20-40k range.