If I Build a SaaS Product without Any Tech Co-Founders, is Outsourcing Reliable?

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Dave’s answer to this Quora.com question:

There will always be people who will tell you that it’s best to build your product in-house, and generally, that’s true. But, there are two reasons that outsourcing for startups is thriving:

  1. Doing everything in-house is very expensive and some startups don’t have the means to do so.
  2. Building a technical team requires some skill and experience, and for startups without a technical co-founder this can really be hard.

In these situations, should you abandon your startup because you can’t build your product in-house? Certainly not.

We handle startups all the time at SourceSeek and we see outsourced startups succeed all the time. We also see failures but rarely are they purely because of outsourcing. So, outsourcing can be a viable means of building your product if you take great care to do it right. Be sure to find good partners, find a company that is experienced with startups, learn as much as you can along the way to reduce general risk, and seek advice from trusted technical advisers every chance you get.

Some of the advice about why outsourcing is hard on startups is correct – you need to get experience owning a product and outsourcing limits that. You may need late night help. Your outsourced developers can become unavailable. Those are real risks, but many startups have overcome them – we have a long list of startup clients who have.

I would urge you to invest some serious time into finding the right outsourcing partner as well as finding trusted resources who can help you with the whole process. And long term, it is always best to bring your development in-house, sure. But, if you aren’t able to build your product in-house that is no reason to give up – it can be done!

Originally published as SourceSeek’s answer to the Quora question: If I build a SaaS product without any tech co-founders, is outsourcing reliable?
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Dave Hecker

Co-Founder at SourceSeek at SourceSeek
Dave is a seasoned technology executive focused software delivery, quality, process, and helping clients succeed at international software outsourcing.