Thoughts on hiring contractors to

[faithlife]

Finish building out an mvp. I’ve gotten really far by myself but I am working full-time and I’m traveling with my partner for the next week and a half and was thinking to hire a contractor to finish building what I’m almost done with so I can actually have peace of mind while traveling.

I’m a technical founder and people have been excited when they hear about my product. I have users signing up on waitlists but they won’t have anything usable for at least 2 more months since I’m developing on my own. I’ve tried searching for a co-founder but it’s a marriage and I wouldn’t rush into one (have before and did not bode well). Would love any advice, though I feel like I will continue enjoying this break and getting to work on building out the rest of the mvp when I’m back. Thanks.

 

[lessme]

@faithlife I agree with others that hiring a contractor to finish building your MVP doesn’t make sense in your situation. Just finish it as soon as you can. I don’t understand the thought process here.

If you know someone and want them to jump in and help, ok. But looking for a contractor from scratch at this point? You’re just creating more work for yourself. Also, there is no way you would be hands off even if you found someone.

 

[dawood]

@faithlife What tech is the MVP built in?

 

[faithlife]

@dawood MERN

 

[smithy25]

@faithlife Not sure why folks are showing so much resistance towards hiring a contractor. Yes, you cant expect to goto sleep and then wake up one day with a finished product, but if you find a good contractor, communicate the requirements well and monitor the progress while you’re away it surely can be done. And I am totally speaking from experience.

At the very least, if things don’t go as planned, you will gain very valuable and relevant lessons in company building and execution. If you want to grow the company, sooner or later you will have to find the right people to do things for you. Doing everything on your own wont scale.

 

[lessme]

@smithy25 I think it's more about expecting to find a contractor out of the blue on short notice so that he can be hands-off while expecting that development won't skip a beat.

It's unrealistic at best and a waste of money at worse.

It has nothing to do with hiring contractors and having people work with you on building the product. It's about the reasoning and expectations for this situation.

 

[tigermoose]

@faithlife It won’t work and you won’t have an mvp when you get back, which is your expectation. There is an old saying about switching horses midstream. Basically, it doesn’t work out. You have to find someone, schedule them, effectively communicate what is going on, disclose what the goal is, get them to buy into the whole thing, etc. this is never going to work.

 

[marinda]

@faithlife Okay, you said not “usable”. How is that an “MVP” if users could not use it? V mean “viable”.

It’s not like the world will collapse if you work 0 - 14 hours instead of 60 during those weeks. Hiring a contractor wont make you an instant success either. Companies are built over years, not few days.Just enjoy your holiday and when you come back, just make up with the hours…

 

[faithlife]

@marinda This is true. I appreciate it.

 

[dharmmy]

@faithlife No self respecting contractor is going to really want to pick up a half done project in some stack that may or may not be their preferred one.

Anybody that does pick it up will very likely just be doing it for the money. And when you question how many hours they’re billing they’ll just say stuff like “oh it’s just that it took us a while to understand all the existing code. And modify this and componentize this and refactor this.”

 

[sugahani]

@faithlife Why not just wait the 10 days?

A contractor will have ramp up time, questions etc. you won’t have time off.

 

[trustlove147]

@faithlife I can do contractor work for u if you are looking for building website

Thoughts

Looking for a right cofounder is much more complicated than looking for a spouse . Rushing to find someone for short run may experience long term risk and lost more !!!

If u have clear mind about what the mvp will look like , u should not have to work on it own

Instead, considering exchanging your time to more valuable things

My thoughts as a cofounder of my previous startup

 

[victoryismine]

@faithlife Hey @faithlife Check inbox.

 

[vtreniseb]

@faithlife There's a difference between outsourcing and in-sourcing. With outsourcing you outsource the work and responsibility for it - generally its a disaster, there's a miss alignment of incentives (the outsourcing company doesn't care about your product).

With in-sourcing, you hire remote devs but treat them almost like direct employees i.e. assign them tasks directly, audit their work etc. I've seen that work really well - you just need to vet and monitor your contractors. Recruitment is always tricky and there will always be some miss hires.

Hiring - ideally via your network (if its large enough) or sign up for a linkedin recruiter account. Lots of companies seem to target devs in LATAM or Eastern Europe (e.g. Poland).

 

[faithlife]

@vtreniseb Interesting, I’m at the point where I’m the solo founder who’s using my own money to bootstrap so I’m not I’d be able to pay a salary for a remote dev but more so contracting a mercenary to tackle some tasks

 

[marinda]

@faithlife These words you wont here from YC founders…

 

[johndaniels]

@faithlife We have done contracting work in the past. Building an MVP for others, including from elite colleges, mit, harvard, stanford can be a pain if they don't have means to pay eventually, which isn't known at the beginning.