

Here’s the Deadliest Catch: Hiring an Agency to Build Your Startup - lyime
http://siliconflorist.com/2008/08/11/heres-the-deadliest-catch-hiring-an-agency-to-build-your-startup/

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brianmckenzie
As an agency programmer, I'll say this: if you're a startup, don't hire an
agency _unless_ your website is simply a marketing vehicle for your (non-web-
based) product. An agency can give you top-notch graphic design, etc, but are
much too slow to service a public-facing web startup. This is due to the
project management process, and the fact that agencies have 30 other clients
besides you. The article is largely right-on.

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KevBurnsJr
Former creative agency social network programmer here.

Seems to be working out alright for former client Education.com :
[http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/05/educationcom-
scores-975-mi...](http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/05/educationcom-
scores-975-million-in-second-round-of-funding/)

The product has changed quite a bit since we launched (design tweaks and
additional features)

Also, they acquired one of the agency's ops guys post launch.

Also worth noting that Education.com has some phenomenal content curators.

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petenixey
Which agency built Education.com?

~~~
KevBurnsJr
SolutionSet

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vaksel
I think the whole "hiring an agency is bad" is overblown. Sure for a hacker
its probably a waste of money, but for normal people? They really don't have
any other choice. Its not like a businessman in his 50s with a startup idea,
will want to spend thousands of hours learning to code his project. And for
what? To have a crappy little site because you don't know half the tricks, and
don't know where to go to find help.

Also the whole "you must have quick changes to succeed" is overblown. Sure a
hacker will probably be able to roll out a new change a week earlier, but how
much can you really gain during that 1 week?

And in the long run the businessman will win, because while you are busy
spending your whole day coding that one extra feature, the business guy can
focus on running his business, while his agency works on the feature requests
based on his requirement document and mock ups.

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brianmckenzie
_Also the whole "you must have quick changes to succeed" is overblown. Sure a
hacker will probably be able to roll out a new change a week earlier, but how
much can you really gain during that 1 week?_

In many cases, a hacker will be able to roll out a change three months
earlier. Sometimes I turn around a change for a client in as little as an
hour, but a big change? Those rarely happen within a timeframe that most
entrepreneurs would find acceptable. Especially if you don't have an agency-
of-record relationship - those always take priority.

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vaksel
I really don't think there is that one feature that will kill a product, if
its not rolled out immediately. + I don't think there has ever been a startup
that didn't have it's users clamoring because they have to wait for some new
feature to get coded. And usually its something very simple too.

And once again you approach this as a hacker. Put yourself in the shoes of a
complete noob. Lets say 2 years later he was able to copy paste together some
working code to get his basic idea working(it has to be basic, because the
person doesn't have the skills/resources to do anything groundbreaking). Then
its time to add a new feature. Once again he needs to dive into the code, and
it'll take him a lot longer to finish, compared to even a contracted agency
that can just jump into the source safe and copy paste the specific code for
that specific function.

If you are a hacker, doing it yourself is definitely advisable. But for your
average Joe Blow who has no clue how to code something as basic as a hello
world app, I'd think its much more advisable to have someone else do it,
instead of wasting time putting together crappy code, they can be up and
running with a decent quality website much faster. And then while the new
changes get coded they can continue working on marketing their site. You can
have the best site on the net, but w/o users its worthless.

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swombat
I've been saying it all along. Outsourcing your product development is a
deadly mistake. Maybe once in a while it might work - but that's really a rare
event.

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mattmaroon
Seems silly to say this as a blanket statement, given that it's provably
worked before. It's probably suboptimal in most cases, but sometimes a startup
can pump out an initial product quickly and cheaply that way.

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KevBurnsJr
_sometimes a startup can pump out an initial product quickly and cheaply that
way._

Worked okay for ConnectBeam : <http://connectbeam.com/>

Outsourced their prototype to India on angel and debt, used the prototype as a
proof of concept to get their Series A, then put together an in-house team to
do it the right way (Struts/Hibernation/LDAP/etc).

Even hired a contractor (this guy) to do some high-gear grinding on the
kludged UI just in time for their first beta shipments.

Even though the initial product was mostly trashed, it got their business from
concept to sales. Quick.

~~~
ericb
Agreed with your post, except where you called Struts "the right way" made me
throw up in my mouth a little bit. :-)

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dariusmonsef
If your startup is based around a single application, then you could work with
a great agency. Your application could be knocked out and then your time would
be mostly focused on building the community around the application and making
notes about what things to add, update & improve in your application update
releases.

My main caution about agencies, was to the entrepreneurs who think they don’t
have to know anything about the tech because they can hire an agency to build
them a complete site… most good startups are never complete.

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Hexstream
"viola!"?

I keep seeing that everywhere... Is it some kind of standard mispelling of
"Voilà!"?

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auston
bscofield ? Whats your take?

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bscofield
I actually replied over there (with a couple of my co-workers). I think that
the post is exaggerated; agencies can be the wrong way to go, but if the
founders are non-technical I think it's probably safer to at least start with
outside help. VCs should know which companies are best able to help a
fledgling company get going, and there's an increasing tendency for companies
like ours (Viget Labs) to build in a transition period to an internal team
once they're hired. Heck, we even help vet and train the internal team
candidates at times, as it's in our best interests to make sure that competent
people take over the applications that we built.

