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Ask HN:Have you founded a startup where in you outsourced the whole tech work?

3 points by jaspalsawhney ↗ HN
If yes, I wanted to know what were your learning's regarding 1. Who to select to give work to? Factors which were kept in mind besides money which is required to be paid to the team developing.

2. How to select a team which can support the system in house once its created? & what phase in the process did you start to build this team?

3. Did you prefer to have the team creating the initial product placed locally where you were or were they located somewhere else in the world?

4. How did you prevent the business idea from getting leaked? NDA etc?

5. What aspects of the business model did you choose to not outsource? Design etc

6. Did you outsource the work to a company or independent contractors?

7. How did you ensure that the technical solution being set up was scalable?

8. Till what point in the cycle did you outsource Vs hiring a team to do in house development? What were the factors which drove your decisions - e.g. validation of business model or minimum customer base or revenue etc?

Thanks

3 comments

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kno
A friend of mine an, MBA guy, founded a startup with almost all the coding outsourcing (the most important part of the code). His startup became well funded and he paid a heavy price for the outsourced decision.

He did not have the sourced code apparently did not bother to care about it when signing the contract because he taught once he have the money the whole thing could be rewritten easy. One thing he did not take in consideration was the downtime it will take to transition from old code to new code. The old code had serious issues and generated terrible scalability mishaps and great mistrust from customers.

By the time the code rewrite was complete the company had overspent money and had lost a truck load of customers.

jaspalsawhney
Thanks. Did he identify what he could have done differently so as to mitigate the risk?
kno
In my opinion, getting a technical cofounder would have been a great asset in helping him make the right decision in the first place. Unfortunately I don’t think he have learned that because the last time I check he was still doing something similar. It has to de with the thinking and respect he has for developers in general. I think his frame of mind is still in the era in which it was widely believed outsourcing could solve all problems. My take is if you want to build a tech company, you MUST have a tech cofounder to avoid dangerous pitfalls.