There is a premium if you can get the domain name. If purchasing the domain name is going eat into your marketing budget, hold off the .com name for now. Once you are successful you can always go back buy it. It might be more expensive, but you can afford more once you have proven your business. You can also look into other extensions like .io and the similar ones. The domain extension is only small part of your overall marketing mix.

How does the churn looks to total customers? 10% of monthly new sales does not sound that bad. Based on the current customers, the annual churn could be as low as 5% in your example, which would be amazingly good for most b2b SaaS companies.

If you can find a developer who would accept your proposal, it is a good deal for you. Most developers worth their salt will not agree to something like it unless you have some unfair advantage.

If a developer is free they can develop on their own ideas and keep 100% of the profits and equity. However, you might be able to find new developers or students who are looking for experience with a model like this.

I heard many variations of this question during the initial phases of building startups from new entrepreneurs.

Think of it this way. If you want to be a racecar driver, do you really need to be a mechanic? It helps if you know how to maintain the car and tune it. Most of the great racecar drivers are not known for their auto mechanic skills. However, the racecar driver cannot be successful without his car being in the top-notch condition. In most cases, they find somebody else who can maintain the car for them.

In my experience, the best founders are the ones close to the customer. If you are in sales or customer management, it would be very useful. You can always find people to help you build the tech platform if you know what the customer wants and how to get it to them. A technical co-founder or an agency can build the platform for you.

There are web designers and web developers. Usually web designers focus on the front end of the website. For designers it is easier to create website in an existing content management site like Wordpress, Joomla rather than creating it from scratch. This saves a lot of time, and cost.

Typically web developers and programmers focus on the backend of the website.

If your website is primarily an informational website, it would be easier to go with a CMS. If you don't like Wordpress, there are many other great solutions out there.

If you really want a custom solution, you might want to search for a web development agency that has both front end designers and backend developers on staff.

As others have pointed out, trying to find a problem for the solution you have is the wrong approach. It is time-consuming and expensive. Over the last few years, I have been involved in a couple of these experiments, with varying levels of success. But if you have a solution already done, then you have to go through this exercise.

The first approach would be to sit down and write down 10-15 different use cases that can use the technology. Once you narrow it down to 5 or so, start talking a few people in each niche to see what are the issues in them and current players.

Another option is to create dummy websites for different niche markets. You can quickly clone landing pages for each niche. Start sending visitors to it using Google ads, if you don’t have a list. Once you get some leads, talk to each to get an idea of which market is looking for the right solution.
Good luck.

Here is the bad news. If your contribution is the idea alone, you are unlikely to find a developer to do it for equity alone. If you have some kind of unfair advantage, it would be different. If you are going to do non tech roles like sales, fund raising etc.. It would be different. Also if you need them just to create the initial product or be a tech founder, it would be different.

If you pay a minimal amount for the development, the amount of equity needed would be reduced.

If you are adding value to the client in terms of understanding the client’s requirement and managing the team, it is unlikely the client will have an incentive to work directly with your vendor. Most customers wouldn't want to work with offshore vendors unless the projects are big. You will have the same issue with domestic employees and freelancers also. I had ex-employees tried to poach customers in the past. Most customers contacted me to warn me about them rather than try to save a few dollars.

You have to do the due diligence with the vendors as you would with any partner. Most vendors are honest and straight forward. If you ware working with an established vendor, chances in your favor. If your vendor tries to poach your clients, there may not be any legal recourse even if you have non compete in place unless you can sue in Ukrane, India etc. Alternative would be to find a offshore vendor with US presence. In that case you would be covered under US laws instead of foreign laws.

There are no direct tax implications if you pay a US company or a foreign company. There are no tariffs yet for services. However you do not get a W9 from foreign companies. So if you ever get audited, you have to prove it was indeed legit transaction. Most quality Indian software companies have US subsidiary. So you can pay the US company instead of a foreign company.ad of a foreign company.

Godaddy is pain for developers and technical people, as it is set up for simple things. You can use any good hosting companies or any cloud servers. But if you need to talk to a human godaddy is a good option. Scalability will not be an issue with Godaddy, as they can sell you any infrastructure when you grow bigger.