Bad Startup Ideas - MVPs should never cost more than some small amount

i love reading about startups. I love reading people's opinions. i love reading from people that have been through them because I love reading about how people solved problems. I also love reading from people that have never been through them because it gives me a bunch of laughs. I've read some interesting advice that I've previously talked about

• Bad startup advice
• Bad advice part II

The most recent thing that i read is that "MVPs should never cost more than (insert some small number here)." This is another laughable statement. on the surface, the statement makes a lot of sense. however, there is a problem. What is the development on the MVP and what should be assigned to the development? Clearly, that should be any payment to a developer? Really? Most founders don't understand development, so they dont know what they should be doing to help developers. first off, let's start with what the problem is. Founders don't know how to translate an idea into something that customers can use. Founders don't know how to document what things should look right, or the business rules, or the database schema, or customer expectations, or testing, or talking to users, or much else that will help developers. trust me, founders think that they can do all of this. the problem is that founders haven't done development before, so they can't be of much help. Founders think that they are helpful, but they aren't so, all of this will fall to the developer. when you factor in that developers only spend 20% of their time writing code, you start to see that estimates don't really provide much value beyond something to beat over the heads of developers.
"Oh I'll just outsource this and it will be cheap and i'll hit that magic number." No that doesn't tend to work. Why? Because Outsourcing is about cheap. Startups are about adding value. There is a big difference between the two. When you look at companies like IBM, GE, Kmart, and Sears, you see the results of concentrating on customer value vs. cost.
My suggestion as always is to find people that you can trust. That means asking your network of comtacts. that means making some calls and seeing how people work. What is the background of a person? That doesn't mean just looking for cheap. That doesn't mean beating someone over the head about money. did someone work all night? did someone work all weekend? Did someone produce a product that worked? i do get it, founders can afford to spend a gazzilion on an mvp. this ismwhere the sales and negotiaon skillsets of people come up. what can you do? how much money vs the featureset? Hint, it is better to cut features and make products better than to have more features that dont work right.
anways, these are my thoughts and how i operate. If you want a "yes" man developer, i'm not it. If you want someone that can make your startup sucessful and a cofounder, contact me and let me know about your startup idea.