Short in Money or Don’t Know How To Code?

Save The Trouble — 4 Reasons Why You Should Outsource Your MVP

Published in

devStories

4 min readNov 2, 2016

You probably didn’t know this but as a fact, today’s most-known companies created their minimum viable product (MVP) using outsourced developers. Companies like Slack, Alibaba, and Github saved quite a lot of money by not having an in-house development team, opting to hire skilled outsourced developers.

Of course, not everyone has succeeded using this strategy. We’ve all heard horror stories of hiring a team overseas. It can be very difficult to trust and communicate with them. The pros and cons of hiring contractors are undeniable, but success stories like Slack and Alibaba have proven that this approach can lead to a positive outcome.

Most of you — decision makers — are probably having a hard to find the right people to do this work and to be honest, we can’t blame you. Cheap developers have been spamming you with emails with ridiculously offers and thus, the level of trust and quality has deteriorated over time.

Companies like devAcademy were created with the idea of helping startups solve these problems.

“We combine the benefits of outsourcing development with the quality of in-house code. How? We figured that we needed to be known as experts for ‘x’. In this case, every engineer in our team is an expert on either iOS, Ruby on Rails, or Android development. Just like most tech companies in Silicon Valley, we use Slack, Github, InVision, and Basecamp to work. These tools and our team culture have allowed us to be transparent among our teams and clients.”

With a talented and skilled team, this company’s code has helped great startups in Los Angeles and one of Peru’s largest universities to develop a platform, saving them enormous amount of money and time. And we know that both are pretty scarce these days. I asked devAcademy’s Founder Lennon Shimokawa why should people outsource and here is what he said:

1) Fixing bad communication

Lennon: With tools like Slack, Hangouts, and Gmail, we are on top of our clients’ needs. We are constantly asking them questions and making sure that we are creating something they want. Communication has been a key to the success of our projects and we are always optimizing with feedback. We are insanely fast at replying emails because we know how important this process is.

One of our top priorities is to ensure 5 things to our customers: engagement, trust, transparency, sharing priorities constantly, and understanding their vision and strategy.

2) No more language barriers

Lennon: Along with communication issues, people that have outsourced their MVPs have mentioned for years that they dislike dealing with non-native English speakers since it generates communication breakdowns. At devAcademy, we are thankful that every developer speaks English fluently. We know how essential this is for the project’s quality, so we have an English speaker in our team who ensures that nothing is misinterpreted. If you are looking to outsource, make sure that at least one person in their team speaks English well.

3) Decrease that burn rate. Save money.

Lennon: If you’ve considered outsourcing, that means that you are either not a coder or you are trying to save money. At our company, we set goals and priorities to make the correct decisions in development, which helps us save a lot of money on pivots. It doesn’t make financial sense to invest in many designers and developers when you don’t have a solid business yet. Do it smart.

4) Delivering the best quality of work

Lennon: This is a very important decision and at devAcademy, we take this more than seriously. We always set an interview time with our potential customers so that they get to know our past projects and our team. Make sure that you have prototypes ready to show so that you can prove how well you can execute. We’ve created a detailed structure of how we will work with them, a protocol of communication, and the deliverables of the project.

As you’re coming up with a new startup idea or you want to build a new site, it is important to remind yourself the 4 things above. Hiring is hard, but if you are working with an expert company you can trust, there’s potential for success. If you still have questions, feel free to email us at sales@devacademy.la.