What Type of Development Functions Are Top Startups Outsourcing?

While it’s not necessarily a great idea to outsource your whole development stack, honing in on the right areas to outsource can save your company a great deal of time, money, and effort. So what dev functions are startups outsourcing?Check out these success stories and where they’ve supplemented their tech teams with outsourced talent.

Slack: Branding and UI

Slack - This juggernaut collaboration tool has been around now for almost 3 years, and has been gaining traction in workplaces across the world – especially among businesses with outsourced teams who need a virtual space to communicate.The secret to their success, however, may be from the outsourcing of “polishing up” their product before it went to market. Slack outsourced the final design of their tool and branding to a proven design firm. This included the web and mobile apps. For Slack, the product functionality was all there already, they just needed to make a product that people preferred to use in an already crowded market – and they did exactly that by outsourcing where they didn’t have the expertise.

AppSumo: PayPal Integration

AppSumo founder, and serial startup entrepreneur, Noah Kagan did the majority of the grunt work in getting the initial minimum viable product for his digital goods deals website off the ground. But he’s used outsourcing since the beginning, and continues to until this day.Kagan saw a niche that wasn’t being filled and got the initial version of his service online in about a week - after doing the coding and marketing (managing to score free marketing on Reddit, all for the cost of breakfast) himself, and outsourcing the PayPal payment gateway on his website to a developer in Pakistan – for the princely sum of $50.For Kagan, he simply outsources the parts of development that he either finds he doesn’t have time to do it himself, or he doesn’t find it fun in doing himself.

Expensify: Back End Systems

Quick and easy expense reports are the core of the Expensify platform. Combining web and app platforms make the app a must-have for those who travel for business.Expensify partnered with a Ukrainian based software house to take care of their back end systems and continue development. By having this team take care of the back-end, they were able to concentrate specifically on front-end development state-side.

JPay: Engineering, QA, and Firmware Dev

A successful platform for all sorts of correctional services including money transfers and video calling, JPay was launched in 2002 and up until 2006 all dev was done in house. Following a rift between management, the CEO, Ryan Shapiro, shifted functionality to outsourcing providers.Ryan outsourced from all over the world, with engineering in Israel, hardware and firmware in China, and QA inIndia – a truly multicultural team! Eventually, the decision was made to switch back to an in-house team after experiencing high growth in unexpected areas, but not before these remote teams made the company what it was.Startups who successfully use outsourcing to enhance their team really need to focus in on just why you are thinking about getting in outside talent. Across startup heads, there is a general consensus that these are all good candidates for areas to outsource:An area where you or your team do not have expertiseA function that your developers are not interested in makingIf you would like your in-house developers to be focusing on a different areaIf you’d like to chat more about how to enhance your startup with an outsourced dev team and accelerate growth make sure to drop us a line here at Zymr! We know what works, and how to get the results that you need.Everything you need to know about outsourcing technology developmentAccess a special Introduction Package with everything you want to know about outsourcing your technology development. How should you evaluate a partner? What components of your solution that are suitable to be handed off to a partner? These answers and more below.Introduction Package

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