"Will I be locked into you or your tools?"

You will definitely not be locked into me. That's one of the reasons I like small commitments. If at any point this is not working for either of us, we stop.

This is also why I like fixed contracts and small buckets of work:

• Small deliverables
• Small commitments
• Small risks

It keeps things clean.

Tool Lock-In

In terms of tools, once we pick a stack, it's natural to keep going with it. There is always some lock-in when you pick any technology.

But I deliberately use very common tools:

• PHP, Laravel
• JavaScript, React, Vue

You can find developers for those anywhere.

It's not hard to move on from me. I would actually prefer you feel comfortable continuing with the stack we've chosen, knowing it's popular, well supported, and not some obscure thing only I understand.

The Nature of Decisions

You can't build anything without making decisions that will be painful to undo. That's just the nature of committing.

But like I said, the technology only really becomes a big deal once you're dealing with serious scale and revenue. That's a good problem to have.