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Ask HN: The build vs buy debate... should we hire a programmer?

2 points by jckund ↗ HN
Hi all, I'm currently writing up a business plan and getting feedback from various contacts I've made that are entrepreneurs or VC's... the only issue is I'm not an experienced programmer. I've been trying to teach myself (via code academy and google python), but feel as if it will take me way too long to get to the level of building a site for this company. (I'm still learning to code regardless, just speaking in terms of building my site). So I started looking for a programmer... is it worth paying a freelancer to do the work? Has anyone tried doing this before? If not, what are my other alternatives?

8 comments

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Egregore
It depends on the site you're wanting to build, if the site is the at the core of your business then probably you should build it yourself, if it's just a business card then probably outsource it.
jckund
The website is the core of my business.
linh
You should give us a little bit more detail on what this business is. Without knowing that how in the world can we tell you if it's worth it to pay a freelancer to do the work? For all we know, you can get it up going with a wordpress website.

Also, here is an alternative: Get a technical co-founder on board, but that's hard because everyone wants a technical co-founder.

jckund
I don't think it's wordpress compatible... it's basically a site that matches guests at business events/receptions so they know who may have common interests, etc. Companies could then access this data and use it for an all around event hosting tool
linh
Not really getting the concept but before you even consider hiring freelancer, a big question is, do you have the money to hire them? Do you know how to hire freelance developers? (Going on elance and hiring cheap developers will probably get you nowhere - I've been there). Do you also need to hire a designer and a front-end developer? Are you trying to build a team or just get the website built and be done with?

Either way, you'll need to do a realistic financial projection to see if you have the money to hire an agency or a freelancer. A good approach would be to write down all the features your website will have (hopefully not that many), draw up a simple information flow diagram, and wireframe the concept using something like balsamiq. After you get all of that done, talk to a couple of reputable agencies and see how much they'll do the work for so you have a general idea of how much it'll cost (but they usually ask for your budget first). If that doesn't work out, guesstimate how long each feature will take to complete. Multiply that by 4 and the hourly cost of the programmer (and designer and front-end engineer if you need them) and you should get a decent estimate of the cost.

jckund
linh,

Do you have an email I could contact you at? I'd love to 1. give you a better idea by attaching a bplan and 2. get more advice because clearly you've been through this.

Justin

linh
You can reach me at henry at henrylin dot me.
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