I hired Naked Development to build a new version of my mobile app in 2022. I paid $203,000 upfront (spread over six months, which was essentially everything I had saved from my first year in business). Their team told me confidently that the app would be ready 5 months later, in Fall 2022.
What f...
I hired Naked Development to build a new version of my mobile app in 2022. I paid $203,000 upfront (spread over six months, which was essentially everything I had saved from my first year in business). Their team told me confidently that the app would be ready 5 months later, in Fall 2022.
What followed was nearly a year of missed deadlines, repeated “we’re almost there” messages, and declining involvement from their team. My very small internal team and I ended up stepping into project management, QA, and timeline-pushing roles because progress had stalled so badly. Every few weeks we would be told the same thing in different words, but without any real or functional progress being delivered.
By mid 2023, after months of delays and vague updates, I decided to bring in new development teams to see if they could help take the project over the finish line. Multiple independent dev teams reviewed the codebase, and every single one independently concluded: the app was non-functional, unstable, not scalable, and could not be launched. They said it would crash immediately, could not support my user base, and had so many foundational issues that it would require a full rebuild. I didn’t want to believe that, so I hired a completely neutral third-party auditor with no connection to any agency and no incentive to win the rebuild. His assessment confirmed everything: the app could not be launched in any form, and the only option was to start over.
After paying over $200K and losing almost a year of momentum, I was left with nothing usable. Once I factored in the cost of delays, internal resources, audit fees, and the eventual rebuild, the financial impact on my business has now exceeded $500,000.
Because of this, I ultimately filed a lawsuit, which is a matter of public record (Superhuman Inc. v. Naked Development). After multiple failed attempts to resolve this privately, the case is now set for trial in February. While litigation is never something a founder wants to go through, at a certain point it became the only viable path forward based on the financial impact and the objective evidence.
I strongly advise against hiring Naked Development. In my experience, the deliverables were never completed, the code was deemed unusable by multiple external teams, and the project was abandoned despite full payment. I urge any founder to conduct extensive due diligence and get independent technical reviews before engaging with any agency - especially this one.
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