Freelancers vs cofounders — who should I work with?

I’m an entrepreneur, I don’t hold mugs by the handle, I do what I want

Just in case you are skimming the article looking for a definitive answer then I’d probably stop right now, because as with many questions in life the answer is “it depends”.

If you are starting a tech heavy business and you are not tech savvy yourself then you will quickly come to the realisation that you have two options:

a. You bring on a tech person as a cofounder, sharing the equity of your business with them

b. You use a (or multiple) freelancers on an hourly or fixed fee basis

Let’s explore both quickly:

Founder (aka. “Skin in the game”) — Being a cofounder of the business their incentives are truly aligned with yours and so they should be as keen to get things moving as you are. Obviously, you will have some sort of negotiation with them as to how you will split the equity, but that one’s completely dependent on you and your circumstances. Perversely as it is also their business (and people can be less concerned when it comes to their own stuff), they may not be as driven as someone who is contracted to work for you, reliant on feedback or references. You also don’t have to worry about how many hours they are clocking up building things when your product becomes more complicated than you first envisaged. A tech cofounder is a lot more useful if you don’t have much programming experience yourself as they will need less direction (generally speaking) than a freelancer — who will expect you to have a relatively decent grasp of the task you require them to perform.

Freelancer (aka. “Flexifounder”) — The biggest plus here is you do not have to sacrifice any of your business to a cofounder, but that does mean you may have to go at things alone… which can be hard when the going gets tough. It can also be expensive if they are working on an hourly basis and things overrun (as they inevitably do), hence why, if you can, the preferred option is to agree a fixed scope and fee is, especially if you are just starting out and do not have unlimited access to capital. Expense is relative though, you could argue that long term it is the cheaper option if you don’t have to sacrifice say 20% of your business at some point in the future when you are raking in the cash. Another thing to consider when working with a freelancer is whether they will be there continuously, i.e. past this stage of the project — it’s never ideal to have different people building code on things they haven’t written and so consistency is vital. Freelancers may also enable you to scale more quickly and in a more agile manner as you don’t have to offer long term contracts and you can just hire as and when bigger tasks come along.

So those are a few things to consider when thinking about how to get going, I personally have gone down the freelance route and it is working well for me but who knows in the future? You can only make the decision based on what works for you at the time, using the information and resources you can find.

Now get off that oh so comfortable fence you have perched yourself on and make the call, what’s it going to be?

Where to next? What about this:

Words of wisdom: if you don’t do it, nobody else will

Or check out a previous post:

You can only do your best…for now

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