Non techie founder about to launch a massive SAAS, proven and tested product market fit.
Non techie founder about to launch a massive SAAS, proven and tested product market fit. I outsourced my software development to this point, I am wondering what are the best ways to go forward from here. How to go about finding, vetting and onboarding talent, etc. Any advice greatly appreciated.
#startup
"about to launch"
"proven product market fit"
Those are antagonistic states. Product-market fit is a state. An offering isn't in that state unless dollar signs and eyeballs repetitively say so. Perhaps you've already had paying clients for the product before "launching"?
As a founder, one of your fundamental missions is to build the right team. At least one co-founder should have the domain expertise and a network to pull talent from. If you don't, find that part of your team.
Recruiting at early stage is tough, you already have to convince people of the vision, product, and package.
But the most important thing to keep in mind is that people attract people. I joined the teams I've been on specifically because of 1-2 people. I was able to recruit people to join my teams because they wanted to work with me (this isn't a humblebrag, some did not). If you're recruiting technical roles, don't ever BS them - be honest and get a technical co-founder who has expertise and humility to attract good candidates.
If you're trying to transition from an outsource built product to an in-house team, you need to plan for knowledge transfer and refactoring time. I'm not sure where you are with funding etc, if you can be more specific and you have significant traction I'd be happy to share my experience via a Skype call for what it's worth.
🎊 Congrats on your upcoming launch. That must be exciting and scary all at once. Growing a development team is a difficult and long problem. Identifying good developers is only a small part of it. The other parts include existing infrastructure, code, and whatever else these people will interact with.
My advice is do not hire immediately. Contract to hire is far safer than the other options. That provides a low risk way to evaluate developers on the job. Interviews do not reveal that. They may speak to knowledge but cannot tell what it will be like to work with this person on a day to day basis. Here's some things to ask yourself:
I've hired and built teams before so feel free to email me if you'd like to discuss more. Otherwise good luck out there!
Thanks or the awesome reply! Exhilarating and terrifying, yep, that pretty much covers it.
Those are some fantastic questions, and you gave me some wonderful ideas to hash out with my current developers.
My fear here is that I just really have no idea what we need, maybe these questions will help get a better grasp of this and light up the road ahead..
I have thought about bringing on someone to build our team, we are currently bootstrapping, but considering funding just or this purpose. It feels very chicken or egg from where I am standing.
You can always ping me in the future if you need help or advice. 🙇🏼♂️
Much appreciated!
Why not just create an agreement with the company who built the system originally? And then use that company to help onboard developers if you have to hire full-time.
You should seriously consider bringing on a technical cofounder CTO or just someone with a significant enough stake in the business to care a lot. Just structure the contract to protect yourself from hiring the wrong person because you never really know until you work with them. If you need to hire developers full time to save money, I think you will lose those savings in efficiency compared to working with a good consulting company and paying more for the work.
Thanks @Mailman, I didn’t see your response until today for some strange reason. This discussion sparked a great talk with our devs and they suggested the same. So we will see how it goes over the next few minutes. 🤞I also feel like we would benefit from someone who is personally invested, eventually.
As the owner of the company, just make sure you always maintain a really good relationship with the actual developers so regardless of unforeseen events, they always have your back.
If I were you, I would also have a discussion with those developers to get a feel for how happy they are with their current employment situation. How long they've worked there, are they full time employees or independent subcontractors? But you want to be very careful when having this type of conversation because it's not good if the company thinks you're trying to steal their employees. It's a direct breach of your contract. You want to bring it up very casually and subtly in the middle of a friendly conversation about other things too so even they don't feel like you're trying to recruit them. You simply want to have the information because it gives you options.
Depending on how good they are, how much you like them, and their situation, if it makes sense for both parties, you might even be able to hire them directly. It all just depends. If you want to hire them directly, and you know they would also like to work for you, you could easily bring up a conversation with the sales person and discuss it with them to see what it would look like to hire them directly.
It's okay to bring it up because most development/consulting companies are essentially staffing companies anyway. Here is why - if you're a development company and you wake up one day to a surge of business and new clients, you only have three choices. 1. Since your employees are all booked, you have to make the client wait until your employees are freed up, which is bad because they might have a schedule to follow which means they will simply get quotes from other companies. 2. You flat out turn away the business and lose out on that revenue 3. You take on the new projects and then hire more developers to do the work. Out of these 3 choices, #3 is the most profitable choice.
That is why development companies are no strangers to the staffing business. In the event you do hire one of their developers full time, the industry standard is to simply pay them a recruitment fee which is ultimately the same thing.
I think a big percentage of developers have found their permanent employers in this manner. It's a win win win because everyone knows what their getting before they make a commitment. However, if the developer is a total rockstar money maker for them with a rare skillset, it's highly unlikely they will let them go for any amount of money.
Keep us updated. I'd like to see what you ended up doing. A nontechnical founder successfully managing a SaaS with ongoing development is not something you see everyday! Good luck!
Hey @SpicyMeatball Congrats on launching a massive SAAS. What kind of talents are you seeking? We rent out dedicated web experts (graphic designers, developers & digital marketers). Check us out at designpac.net maybe we can explore an opportunity to work together.
This is great, thank you!
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
Not yet. But I will definitely post it for feedback once we are live. 😁