To outsource or build ourselves?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6084837

by dwkns • 13 years ago

1 2 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm a UX lead who's going to be the product guy in a new start-up. It'a data driven financial services product for a niche but high spending market.

We're well funded but we don't currently have a tech director on board.

We're considering outsourcing the initial build of the platform/site while we create an internal team.

Is this a good idea or nuts? Anyone had a similar experience?

agilord• 13 years ago

What do you consider as a tech director role?

Outsourcing works if you have all of these:

- solid understanding what technology you are using and how the contractor party will provide you the implementation

- solid understanding what the business requirement is and how you will communicate with the contractor party

If you have a single person who is able to communicate both, the outsourcing should be OK. Another consideration is the know-how: if your services are easy to copy, handling out the implementation part to a third party might not be a good idea at all.

dwkns• 13 years ago

Thank you. That was pretty much my thinking too.

I understand the technology (just can't create it myself) and I've been balancing Business Requirements and User Needs for years so have that covered.

And while our idea/implementation might be easy to copy (in fact it's already been done by others in different markets) our data is proprietary and unique. And that is our real value differentiator.

The tech directors role as I saw it was to oversee the product from a technical perspective. Choose the technology, hire and manage the development team etc.

To outsource or build ourselves?

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