Hmm... None of these, with the possible exception of no privacy (as in, the defaults provide no privacy), sound like they would stop you from putting it out there to see how it does and then improving as you go (outsourced, etc).
I have fallen into the trap of "more development" will solve this before. If you're selling a fire hose to someone on fire, they won't be too concerned with its color. Are you not releasing because there is no fire? Is that possibly why the developer did not see dollar signs and left? I ask you this not to be glib, but because I was on the other side of a similar, but much more amicable situation.
I think that the project was doomed with this particular developer from the start, because it sounds like she doesn't really know how to program. 12 months for a Django website with nothing to show for it is insane.
My comments are mostly intended for bystander-readers who're thinking of doing the same thing - paying a technical developer a full salary + 1-5% equity to develop a product from scratch. There're a lot of people that still suggest that, and it really doesn't work, as you've found out the hard way.
I dunno what advice I'd give to you personally - it's a hard situation, as many others have pointed out. Probably cut your losses, chalk it up to an expensive learning experience, and move on, then try again some other time. As I mentioned in another comment, I think it's fairly unlikely that this developer left you usable code that someone else could pick up, so it'd be difficult to get a contract developer to push it to finish line. You could learn to hack yourself - Python and Django are not difficult - but it'd set you back at least a couple months, and then you'd still have to implement everything.
[Edit: last paragraph was on the assumption that her work was not even demoable, but rereading your post, it sounds like you've gotten to alpha but just need to incorporate the feedback in. If that's the case, a contractor might work, but be aware that it's harder to read code than to write code, and if the code quality is bad enough any contractor would just have to throw everything out and start from scratch.]
If you can find a technical cofounder, someone that you trust that you know is a good developer, I'd do that (and give the decent equity from the start!), and then they can probably write the whole site from scratch in a couple months. But it has to be someone you know well, someone whose skills you're sure about, because otherwise you run the same risk with them.
Agreed Javascript in itself is a whole different beast together. I would have considered encouraging Drinko to learn jQuery first but then if you don't know how to hack to begin with then that advice doesn't really count.
Agreed 12 months for a demoable web app is bad IMHO, unless you're writing avionics software(even that is a stretch) web apps aren't exactly rocket science to begin with. So you can chalk it up to developer inexperience OR she was doing work on the side. Which would probably explain why it took her 12 months to begin with.
Damn. I feel for you then. If she's gone, she's gone. Fat chance she'll even document/transition the app. She's probably gambling on the fact you have no money to pay another developer so she figures she won't have to do it.
As others have said... learn to program. Consider it a character building exercise. I don't see too many other ways out of this situation.
That said, I don't think she was being malicious here. Most of these stories don't involve malicious folks. But when working with contractors you have to factor significant cost overruns as a reality. The work will be costlier and take longer than you expect.
EDIT: I also forgot to add. This is a litmus test. If she thought that her work would yield dividends, she might just bite the bullet and work for free until everything is finished. But she's not. She doesn't have confidence in the viability of your product/service. You might want to probe her and ask why. If you aren't going to get much out of her, you may as well at least try to get some feedback.
I raised the funding, performed the market research, liased with many different health organisations, classifed the information in the database, wrote all the copy for the app, and created the interface mockups working with a designer.
* Maybe you really did do a majority stake's worth of work, and she was just inexperienced.
* Maybe you didn't really do a majority stake's worth of work, and she felt like she had gotten shafted. You did start her at 6%.
* Maybe she was just a bad employee and a crap dev and wanted the paycheck. You weren't experienced enough to notice and fire her.
* Maybe through no fault of her own the project became untenable (for instance, maybe the spec changed a bunch of times, or you couldn't hammer out a reasonable set of features to launch on --- this has happened to us lots). You ran out of money, and she couldn't stay, good faith or not.
The idea was that always that she would be a full co-founder. We agreed on a low equity split initially because of the asymmetric risk we were taking. The idea was always to increase her stake 6 months into the project, but not in the way it happened.
I met her through a friend, and 3 months ago would have been proud to call her my cofounder.
I am going to learn to hack regardless, I am just trying to figure out the best way forward in the short term, as the payoff for learning to hack will be a few months.
It doesn't sound particularly like she believed in the idea.
I think in retrospect it would have been better to offer 50% and the same salary as you.
Going forward though, I'd say definitely learn to hack. Also find people who might help not because of a salary, but because they think the idea is cool and want to be part of it.
Learn to hack. Giving any employee a hazy equity offer with promises to "scale it up" is a bad idea. The better your prospects get the more she is likely to feel screwed. And the worse they get, the less motivating the prospect of continuing seems.
Any scaling equity package should be linked to dates and performance goals. You basically said you didn't want her to own the company unless it succeeded, when success was contingent on her.
Sounds like she trusted you. Then stopped trusting you. Then left a few months later. You screwed up. Go apologize.
She wasn't initially hired as an employee - it was more of a contract agreement to develop the beta, with the option to come on as a full partner if we were working well together.
No one is saying learn to hack is the solution to the issue. Regardless of doing it alone, or finding a team, it'll be an invaluable tool. It'll help him play a more significant role if a team was formed.
It's not part of the solution here. It's just a good investment if you are running a tech start-up.
For example, if there was another partner here that knew how to hack, but wasn't a nurse, I'd say: Learn as much as possible about health care - it's your industry.
Either learn to hack, or find others who are passionate about the idea who can hack. Rather than people who are passionate about a salary. But doing both is a good idea IMHO.
note that she took a pay cut because she wanted a greater stake in the company. does that fit with her not believing in it?
it does sound like she didn't have the experience or the maturity to whittle down to an achievable project, however. learn to code, maybe that plus this experience will make you a much stronger manager and designer next time around.
...as the payoff for learning to hack will be a few months.
It doesn't have to be that long. Do you have any programming experience? Do you have any friends that do? With a smart friend guiding you through, you can skip a lot of annoyances when you learn to program.
This is also a prudent point - what have you been doing the last 12 months? That would have been more than enough to get the hang of Django...
I don't have any programming experience beyond BASIC as a 5th grader.
Market research, ethnographic study, trying to raise more funding,(too early for VCs here, and there are not many risk taking angels here), running the ongoing alpha, liaising with patient groups, and health organisations, writing copy and designing interfaces. Learning about tech startups is a phase transition from the perspective of a nurse.
