A Naturally Biased, Unbiased Case for Outsourcing
The hard part of any business is rarely how something gets built, but what it is that is being built. Do you use a freelancer, find a CTO or, dare I say it, outsource? There can be a bit of stigma attached to using an outsourced development team when starting a business. Full disclaimer — we are an outsourced development studio, but having built products in both camps (as the internal team and the external agency) I have seen success and failures with both approaches. There are 100 ways to skin a cat, and here are some things to consider when assessing if an outsource option is going to be the right way for you.
Speed to kickoff
Building your own team takes time, which is likely the one thing you have the least of when starting a business (aside from money). Interviewing, negotiating salaries and onboarding all eat up that time.
Agencies have a team ready and can start tomorrow. Workflows are refined, processes in place and everyone knows their roles. The first sprint will be history before you would have finished deciding if you should use Jira, Trello or just stick post-its on the walls.
They have made the mistakes already
No matter how innovative your business is, chances are some of the pieces will have been solved before. Agencies work across businesses and products and can bring a wealth of experience and diversity to the table. They have seen the problems you will not know to look for and made the mistakes that you don’t need to.
You can focus on the rest of the business
Hiring an agency allows you to focus on hiring and marketing and fundraising and selling and networking and everything else it takes to run a business while the experts ensure your product is delivered. Having one point of contact with scheduled meetings and deliverables will free up much-needed capacity on your side.
An army when you need it
Generally, you will have an agreed deadline for the project. If things start to slip to the right an agency has the extra resource to get it back on track.
More than one head
When working with an agency you tap into all the designers, developers and knowledge across their whole team, not just the ones on your project. Access to more thinking power and perspective is invaluable and hard to put a price on.
It takes a village to raise a child
Building a great product takes a mixture of skills. You need someone that obsesses over the customer, someone to make it look and feel incredible and a team to build it so that it delivers on the design and is scalable when you grow. Having access to specialists in each facet of product development will always deliver better quality then relying on one person to be the jack of all trades.
The best people
The best designers and developers are hard to find, expensive and the allure of equity in ‘the next uber’ is becoming a lot harder to sell. Agencies, however, offer secure paychecks, regular hours and variety of work which makes them relatively attractive employers to talent.
You only use them when you need them
In the early stages of a business you need to spend more time watching and listening to customers then you do building features. Working with an agency helps focus your attention on what will actually add value, and once the value is delivered you don’t need to keep them occupied as you do full-timers.
The downside
Now for the unbiased bit — I don’t think that the agency approach is the best option for everyone. If you have a technical co-founder, have built products before or have a network to lean on then you are in a different place to most.
For those not in that position here are a few truths to be aware of:
You don’t ‘own’ the core of your business
While you will own the IP of your product, all of the learning and knowledge is not inside your company. The innate understanding of the nitty-gritty elements will be in the heads of people somewhere else which could prove hard to get out down the line.
It's expensive
There are no two ways about it, hiring an agency is going to cost more than any other avenue. No matter who the agency and where in the world they are they have rent to pay, salaries to cover and margins to maintain, all of which you will be footing the bill for. There is something to be said for getting what you pay for in some respects to this (🥜s & 🐒s), but that's a conversation for another time.
They have their own business to run
They will have other concerns that will at times be at odds to yours; other clients and planned days off are just a couple of things that are outside your control but may impact you directly. While you can develop mutually committed agency relationships at the end of the day their success is not as reliant on this as yours.
So do you need a dev team?
Ultimately the decision at the end of the day will come down to a balance of factors: cost, quality and access to talent, deadlines, your experience and so on. In some cases, a freelancer may cut it, while in others a specialised team may be what it takes. Regardless of the route you go down, you are going to be shedding a lot of blood, sweat and tears together so it's important you trust each other and leverage the knowledge and expertise to deliver a product greater than the sum of its parts.
🔌 Have you got an idea you want help building, a project you need a hand with or just a spare 20 minutes and looking for a free coffee and average banter don’t be shy — pop in for a visit!
