Why should your startup hire a remote team?

People are creative by nature, and the constant influx of new business ideas result in a stable rise of startup culture. However, the startup launch nowadays has multiple challenges linked to it. A new company must secure the investment, hire a software development team, complete their MVP development, market their product successfully and obtain customer loyalty to ensure long-term success. Below are several important startup tips on why working with a remote team can help achieve most of these goals.

Actually, succeeding with most of these tasks is becoming much easier nowadays. There are multiple ways of securing the investment for a startup, from traditional seed funding and VC capital firms to startup accelerator programs, launching ICOs and crowdfunding. Even despite the fact equity is hard to monetize on the initial stage — securing the funding at startup launch is easier nowadays, than it was before.

The next challenge lies within hiring a team capable of developing the product you want to sell. The main issue here lies in the fact that the startup community is actually pretty small, and there is a huge gap between the market demand and the numbers of developers available. There is an interactive map of software engineering in the US created in 2016.

It clearly shows the software development job openings are not limited to the major IT hubs in Silicon Valley, Seattle, San-Francisco, New York, Boston and Washington, DC.

However, the majority of developers are concentrated in the areas listed above — and relocating them to Atlanta or Houston can be quite a daunting task. Thus said, there were at least 220,000 open software development jobs in the US in 2016 — which means that the business did not have easy access to talents of required qualification. What is even worse, only 13% of schools and colleges in the US provide IT-related skills to their graduates, so the chasm between the needs of the job market and the possibilities of the educational system is growing annually.

Therefore, a startup might find it difficult to access the required talent, and expensive to maintain it in-house (as workplace expenses should be also considered). This is why working with a reputable remote team can be the solution for a company that wants its product developed and launched on time.

Benefits of working with a remote team for a startup

Hiring a remote software development team holds 5 major benefits for a startup:

• Cost savings. We have clearly described this above — remote work means you pay only for the task at hand and do not have to pay the team wages once the project is completed.
• Time savings. The remote team begins to work on a project in full from day one, thus shortening the time-to-market for your product. You must also consider the importance of polished workflows that save time on every stage of the product development. In addition, a well-fitting team can work without long adaptation or internal frictions, which can impede the delivery time frames.
• Access to top-notch talent. Any IT professional nowadays can work and continuously improve only in the atmosphere of tutorship and friendly competition with like-minded professionals. Thus said, the developers strive to achieve the best position obtainable and change the place of work once they feel they grow over it. Therefore, the best destination for them is working for Managed IT Services Providers — the companies that don’t concentrate on one product, but offer a variety of complex projects instead. This keeps the professionals engaged and allows them to improve their skills by handling a wide variety of tasks.
• Vast expertise. In order to be successful, a startup must be innovative — it is a staple of entrepreneurship. This means, however, that the intended solution might be unique and disruptive, so there might be no known paths to make it work. This means a good deal of experimentation before the optimal product architecture and required IT infrastructure is designed and implemented. Thus said, there is bound to be a certain amount of R&D failures before the team gathers the experience and the project succeeds — and this time and effort still must be paid for. Remote work with a dedicated team means these R&D expenses are paid by their previous customers and they are ready to come up with a solution for your case based on their firsthand experience.
• Ongoing support. Once the product is released the partnership might end — or you might opt for a long-term support and continuous improvement of the product, as the initial developers are obviously the best choice for such a task. This ensures experience continuity, you get the best possible product support — and you still don’t have to pay for office space and other expendables.

We admit these remote team pros might sound too good to be true and there certainly are several challenges when hiring a remote team for software delivery.

Challenges of working with a remote team for a startup

The challenges of working with a remote team are actually just a few, but you must keep them in mind nonetheless:

• Time-consuming management. Lots of startups think direct control over the remote work is required as a part of entrepreneurship. This is done under a “team extension” model, where the entrepreneurs themselves act as Project Managers, and the remote team members report on their progress daily, so the project completion is transparently monitored. However, this is obviously a time-consuming work that requires significant effort from the entrepreneur. The alternative is working under “dedicated team” model, where the remote Team Lead acts as a single point of communication between the team and the product owner. This frees up your time, so you can concentrate on securing the investment or engaging the potential customers, while still keeping the hand on the pulse of the project.
• Miscommunication. This is one of the main problems, as the startups can rarely express their requirements clearly enough, or wish particularly ineffective implementations of the project requirements. This is why flat level communication and detailed explanation of the expected product features (as well as the best way to implement them) — is crucial to ensure the project success. One of the best ways to ensure this mutual understanding is getting to know the team — through Skype conferencing or in person. Either a customer can visit the remote team office or the team can go to your location to make personal acquaintance, clarify all the project requirements and establish the workflows and collaboration.
• Team instability. Software development teams tend to be dynamic and the roster changes every now and then. This might pose a potential danger to your project, as the key roles might quit amidst the development. There is but one way to prevent it — ensure there are replacements available on the project kickoff stage and put the contract terms down in writing to ensure the team commitment for a period of time (6 months usually). Working with a long-standing and reputable company can be another safeguard, as their teams are usually well-balanced and the risk of team changes during a project is quite low.

Thus said, there are indeed some moments to be aware of when working with a remote team. However, the tangible benefits of such collaboration outweigh the potential risks by far.

Conclusions on the remote team pros and cons

As you can see, hiring a remote team can be hugely beneficial on the stage of startup launch. The business gets instant access to qualified professionals who begin working on the project from the get-go. This is cheaper than building an in-house software development team and there are more chances of success. By the contract terms, the customer retains all the intellectual property rights for the product and such a remote work on MVP development quite often grows into long-term mutually beneficial partnership.

What is your experience with hiring a dedicated team for your startup? Please share your opinion in the comments below!