Startups should hire remote devs to survive.

Stripe’s CFO published this article last week:
Software developers are now more valuable to companies than money.

A recent study from Stripe and Harris Poll found that 61 percent of C-suite executives believe access to developer talent is a threat to the success of their business. Perhaps more surprisingly — as we mark a decade after the financial crisis — this threat was even ranked above capital constraints.

It’s shocking and obvious all at once. Tech talent is expensive.

Top Silicon Valley salaries have ballooned above $200K/year. It’s good for developers (for now), terrible for small budgets.

As someone who works mostly with startup founders, I was left thinking:

What about the startups? aren’t they competing for the same top talent? And they really can’t afford it.

Is the full-timer, the fancy degree, and the fancy office really worth it?

I’ve spent most of my career in SF and NYC, and I’ve seen startups mostly hiring only full-time devs. I get the obvious benefits but we know you’re setting yourself up for extinction.

illustrations by Denis, the very talented “fat cat illustrator”.

The nice thing about a startups though: no rules! You can do whatever you want.

You don’t have to hire only $200K developers. A founding team or a few core devs + teams of remote devs as demand comes at you is a much more efficient way to operate today’s tech talent climate.

Services like TopTal, UpWork, and Turtle (disclaimer: I’m a co-founder at Turtle) can get you connected with great software developer freelancers from around the world and 40 hour work weeks aren’t required (they’re just what we’re used to).

Remote work is the future. It’s not something to be afraid of, it’s something to be embraced.

Companies like Turtle make hiring a remote developer easy. You can get started in minutes and hire team members with commitments as low as 10 hours per week.

Getting to product-market fit without running out of money is critical for a startup — it’s essentially all there is to it to starting a company. If you’re a startup, do yourself a favor and find the quickest and cheapest way there (while maintaining as high quality as you can find/afford, of course).

If you haven’t hired remote before, here are a few lessons learned:

• Test hard. Test on real world projects (filter out who you wouldn’t want to work with as quickly as possible). Be prepared to spend time testing unless you’re using a service that tests for you (like Turtle or TopTal).
• Prioritize loudly and often. Make sure your team knows company and individual #1 objectives (no matter where they’re located).
• Tools and processes matter. How are you running meetings? Are you using the best video conferencing software? (the best video conferencing software is probably a lot cheaper than the crappiest office you can find…).

And here are some of the easiest dev projects for remote teams:

• Build the backend and design in-house, hire a remote team to build the mobile app.
• Build the iOS version in-house, hire a remote team to cover Android.
• Convert an existing app to a new framework or language (i.e. Old -> ReactJS or iOS -> React Native).

The trick in each of these scenarios is: founders or the in-house team do the strategic decision making and work, remote teams are added to help execute (at a nice discount).

And most importantly: start small. Think of something compartmentalized to start with. If it doesn’t work out, reevaluate. If it does work out, take things further, one step at at time:

We built Turtle to help startups start small (remote dev teams), quickly and easily.

Most software development work is done in front of a computer and something called the internet has been around for a while now.

Spinning up a remote dev team is easier than you think. And it’s a great way to not go startup-extinct.

If you’re curious about about what we’re working on at Turtle, check out turtle.ai or apply as a freelancer.