

When Startups Should Hire a Dev Shop (other than "never") - thesyndicate
http://bhargreaves.com/2010/03/hire-dev-shop-other-never/

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ig1
It misses a key decision factor: Is the technology going to be a competitive
differentiator for your company.

If so then having it in-house is much more important because your business
strategy is going to be closely tied to your development work as the company
evolves.

However if you primarily compete on other factors (i.e. content, sales
ability, marketing, etc.) then outsourcing the dev work and focusing on your
core competency makes a lot more sense.

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mrkurt
I just hired a "dev shop" to build a prototype for my brother and I, despite
being able to do it myself. I elected to this because:

* It's pretty straightforward, I'm probably overqualified to build it. * I'm better off keeping a full time job and paying for someone else's time. Both monetarily and for networking reasons. * Since I do know enough to build it, I can take it and run with it if/when it becomes a good idea.

Depending on your perspective, you may not consider this a "startup". Until we
have a prototype, I don't see how it could be. The potential for it is huge
though. :)

~~~
tectonic
I'd be interested to hear how this turns out.

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kanwisher
The article doesn't really discuss the upside of hiring a development team for
a startup. It mostly focuses on if I don't know how to code or manage people
you should. But if you don't know how to manage you probably won't get good
results out of a dev shop.

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Zak
I can think of another very good reason to hire a dev shop: you already have a
developer or two, but want to try out a feature that's well outside of their
areas of expertise. For example, your core application is a Rails-based
website, but you want to try offering an iPhone app. Note that if that feature
is successful, you will probably need to train your developers in that
technology or hire someone, and rewrite it from scratch.

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gommm
I think the comment from Michael Schubert from Pivotal is spot on
([http://bhargreaves.com/2010/03/hire-dev-shop-other-
never/#co...](http://bhargreaves.com/2010/03/hire-dev-shop-other-
never/#comment-34)).

When you're not sure about what you exactly want and need to quickly iterate
on your idea, a good Agile Dev Shop is great. It allows you to limit your
risks and not hire people you won't need...

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silverlake
I think salesforce.com was built this way. Benioff hired 3 guys and left them
alone in an office for a year.

