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Ask HN: Build app myself or outsource it?

8 points by blizkreeg ↗ HN
HNers: I need some advice/counsel on a dilemma I keep flip-flopping on.

I have a full-time 9-6 job and run a venture/project on the side. The website for my project has been live for a while and has a small number of users. Given the space it is in (mass consumer), I'm finding that growth and traction is seeming hard to come by without an app. All my competitors have mobile apps.

I'm a proficient coder and have little doubt that if I consistently spend my evenings and weekends for the next 2-3 months, I might be able to pull off a MVP-level app.

I'm currently using the Ionic framework to develop the app.

Where I keep going back and forth on is whether I should just outsource it instead? I have a budget of about $15-20K but am finding it hard to find trusted, solid freelance devs/agencies with experience that'll be able to pull this off (within my budget). I don't want to hand this off to someone on Elance.

If I find a freelancer to do this for me, I could spend my time thinking about and working towards a growth strategy and making the product stronger.

Please help me see both sides, from your own experiences. DIY or outsource?

As an aside, if you happen to know a talented freelance dev/small shop in the US or overseas who can develop a middleweight iOS & Android app (6-8 weeks timeframe) for (max) $20K, I'd love an introduction. Email in my profile.

9 comments

[ 364 ms ] story [ 434 ms ] thread
sheraz
I'm in a similar spot. Below are some of my own experiences:

Depending on the scope of your project that budget could certainly be reasonable.

Here are some of my strategies:

- I dont use E-lance to source talent. Rather, I use their escrow system to pay my non-US freelancers. (Escrow is a must-have for me).

- There are lots of places to source good talent. You might be surprised what a good tweet with the right hashtags might bring back you. Try a tweet. Try to post something in your linkedin profile.

- Go right to the communities of the frameworks/technologies you are using. For example, Appcelerator (my mobile tech of choice) has a small (but decent) community that is active with their own slack channel (ti-slack.slack.com). It is free to join up. IRC on freenode is also helpful.

I'll drop you a line privately as well.

Good luck out there -- would love to see what other HN'ers have to say as well.

day_
sent you an email. But I highly recommend outsourcing for this kind of project.
[deleted]
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qq66
I would first verify the causal link between "no mobile app" and "small number of users." Can you scope the product or marketing towards a desktop-centric audience and verify that your product can scalably grow in that sub market?
blizkreeg
I can and that is what I'm doing right now. But some of the interactions just lend themselves better to a mobile use-case. That being said, there is nothing stopping me from trying to vet the market more with a desktop-centric audience.
Jeremy1026
Can I ask the reason you want to go with Ionic? Rather than truly native?
blizkreeg
I want both iOS and Android out at the same time and don't want to double spend time or money. Kill two birds with one stone.
hawe
If you're absolutely sure that you need a mobile app, and you say you validated that users say a mobile app is a needed as a solution for That Problem: How about you write a minimum app for That Thing to do that one (or 2) main thing that your service does, but not everything. If that'll have a good number of downloads, then that's a good validation. * A small product is also easier to outsource. * I did tiny test projects with applicants before, and it worked well.