[redmagnet]

I work at a typical web agency and in my experience one of the red flags for a project is the entrepeneur whose company's success relies solely on the website that we build for them (as opposed to most of our other customers who are building a website for an existing company). Hiring an agency to build a startup is a recipe for disaster. As well intentioned as they might seem, the agency just can't care about the project as much as a technical co-founder is going to care. Often when the business model turns out to be crap and there's no money left, the agency is blamed for building a website that doesn't "work".