@despreate I've been doing this for 10+ years. Let me tell you about the costs and risks.
First, my studio is based in Italy. We support startups and scale-ups to build digital products. We work with people that want excellent quality UX/UI. So I'm biased from what I know. As everyone else.
Costs:
- Brand identity & simple MVP: we charge at least 15-20k. More frequently, 35-40k.
- Brand identity & complex MVP: 100k or more. No fixed budgets but sprints (see Agile Contracts).
Benefits:
- Work with a top-notch team from the start (= excellent output if part of your positioning is a strong brand and quality)
- Temporary team instead of long-term hiring contracts (in Italy and other European countries, employee terminations are very strict).
Risks:
- Product-Market fit is a long way to go. Especially if your product is purely digital (i.e. SaaS), you risk spending all your budget on your first MVP to realize it's not what the market was looking for (very likely), and you won't have enough resources to improve or change your product.
- Vendor lock-in. For a non-technical founder, it will be challenging to switch contractors. So you better choose well.
Success story: we've built an MVP for ~35-40k (e-commerce, pet food). The client got some initial traction with ads with an agency (we don't do marketing). Then got money from VC / angels. Then hired internal dev team. Now they're growing and happy.
Failure story: a client spends considerable money on the first MVP, but there's not enough market demand. The client has not enough money to iterate on the product and test with different target segments. He can't get money from VC. End of story.
I've seen more of the former than the latter. But that's how startups work. For an agency like us, the most frequent success stories are about more mature startups that come to us to improve their product's UX or launch new features/products.
Hope this helps.