How to Hire Development Team for a Startup

Probably each tech startup has faced the need for hiring an outsourced dedicated development team. Contrary to tech companies, startups might struggle with financing and maintaining a house team of software developers, which will be working on a single project.

Clearly, hiring a software development team is not the only issue here. Apart from startup developers, you will also need to keep an office, as well as staff, working there. Additionally, in terms of choosing an on-premises method, you will have to deal with numerous departments and specialists from different fields.

Alternatively, there are outsourced development teams, who are proposing the same, or even better results for less salary. As a great bonus, all the bureaucratic procedures as well as employees and departments, needed for management and recruitment, are not your concern anymore, becoming the responsibility of an outsourced vendor. Yet, these are not the only benefits, provided by outsourcing. Thus, let’s find out what other advantages of outsourcing are and how to find a developer for your startup.

Types of Outsourced Development Teams

When it comes to hiring a software development team for a startup, the first and most important step to do - is to set up clear requirements, i.e. clients should understand what exactly they are looking for, before actually starting the hiring process.

Truth be told, a dedicated software development team is just a single example of possible remote developers' team collaboration cases.

For instance, apart from the dedicated development team, we can name remote and offshore teams, as well as team extension services, or freelance developers. Even if the difference may seem not as crucial sometimes, in reality, it can have a great impact on the overall efficiency of the software project development cycle. Thus, you will have to decide which one is the most suited for your startup. Clearly, to make a more balanced choice, you will also need to figure out the differences between all the foregoing cooperation methods.

• Freelance developers. These are the cheapest and simplest solutions for any startup. Freelancers are communicating directly with their clients, avoiding third parties. So, on the one hand, it is much cheaper and simple to work with a few individual software engineers. Yet, if you are looking for a full-fledged team, then freelance is most likely to be not the best choice, because it might become a challenge to ensure communication and collaboration with a remote team of individuals, who have nothing in common.

• Outsourced startup developers are a great possible alternative. Just like freelancers, such specialists are performing specific and previously agreed tasks. Yet, it is possible to continue your cooperation by signing new agreements. Outsourced developers are more expensive to work with because they are usually proposed as a service by outsourcing companies. Still, it is a very useful approach, due to the fact, that if you won’t get satisfied with the results, you can easily switch the team after the agreed tasks were done.

• Offshore dedicated team model. Finally, among the most common practices to hire a software development team is to find a dedicated remote team. To make it simple, it is similar to having a full-fledged team of startup developers, who are staying remote, yet fully dedicated to the project, meaning that they have no other priorities except for your assignments.

Once again, which one to choose - is the client’s preference, which depends on the overall context of your future or ongoing project, working specifics, and available resources. Yet, in order to make this process easier for you, we created a brief list of case studies for each possible solution, in order to better illustrate what conditions are preferable for each of the foregoing.

How to Choose Startup Development Approach

Freelance Startup Developers are obviously the ultimate solution in cases, where you have a limited amount of resources and a few simple tasks or features to develop. Therefore, you can easily find a freelancer, who meets your requirements and delegate them a particular project scope of work to do. However, this is a great scenario, when you need to embody just a part of an app.

You don’t want to have a freelance model become your main startup development method, because it is hard to fully rely on this type of startup developer due to the fact, that they are mainly working on multiple projects simultaneously, as well as quite unpredictable when it comes to long-term project commitments, which is just a few of possible challenges of managing a team of freelancers.

Additionally, it is a very difficult task to gather a group of such individuals within a single project instead of using them as a team extension service. To rephrase it, freelancers are a great option, when you already have a full-time startup development team, yet lack some extra hands.

Summing up all the above, freelancers are a great choice in short-term agreements, when you require very specific and limited functionality to be done, not a software engineer for a full-time job, especially not an entire team of developers. The only working case is when you can replace the development team with a single or a few freelance developers - when your project is so small and simple, that it can be developed by a single person. In other cases, it is better to forget about such a solution.

Outsourced startup developers are a much more suitable choice for startup projects, which require an experienced team, capable of developing all required functional features from scratch, or continuing the development cycle.

Outsourcers are beloved by various tech giants or other less significant players in the field of IT, thanks to their level of expertise and the global pool of talent, which proposes all possible team configurations and tech stacks to work with. Unlike others, outsourced startup developers can start working almost immediately, regardless of the progress or startup stage, the software project is currently at.

Yet, their services can cost more, and it is hard to predict whether you will be able to cover all the development expenses. Frankly, there are various ways how to calculate and estimate the entire process in advance. For instance, you can try balancing the iron triangle with a fixed budget. This will allow you to agree on the scale of work, as well as the time, needed for tasks to be done.

A dedicated development team model seems to be a golden middle between both. To put it in a nutshell, these are simply the same as the in-house developers, working in very comparable conditions and on almost the same terms, yet are located elsewhere, except for your actual office. Thus, you can manage to get access to the global talent pool, by hiring a startup development team from, let’s say, Eastern Europe, still showing great results and being cheaper.

Contrary to the rest alternatives, offshore developers allow you to find a full-fledged team of software engineers, that will meet all project requirements, have the required qualification, and be able to work from the very beginning of the software development process.

How to Find a Developer for Your Startup?

When it comes to hiring a software development team, there are different ways how to find one and contact it. Depending on the type of startup remote development team you have chosen, the approach will also vary.

For instance, if you are willing to collaborate with freelance startup developers, all you need to find a freelancer is to find specialized online platforms like Toptal, or UpWork. There, you simply look for developers, check their portfolio, proceed with an interview, and sign an agreement. To make such a process easier, these platforms are proposing multiple user-friendly features like ratings, feedback, various security guarantees, etc. As a result, it won’t be an issue to find what you are looking for.

Alternatively, both dedicated software developers and outsourcers are usually more difficult and specific to find. For example, most such remote teams are proposed as a service by a particular software development company. Thus, it will be extremely hard to find the portfolios of these startup developers bypassing the company itself.

Instead, most preparation and routine steps are performed in direct cooperation with the startup company, hiring a team is one of the final steps. So, it might be difficult to understand how talented developers are and what technical skills they have. Yet, this is true just for the newcomers to this field. To rephrase it, startup owners, who have at least some experience in such collaborations can easily find all required information. For a better illustration of how to find a developer for your startup with the use of an outsourcing company, let’s consider a specific case.

For instance, here, at Incora, we highly value the needs of our potential customers. This is why, we try our best to provide them with all the needed information on the types of agreements we are using, our technical expertise, the industries we have worked with, successful projects, etc. Most of this information you can easily find on our website, in the case studies section. Additionally, we try to keep up with various B2B platforms, where you can find our company, as well as the feedback or ratings. We regularly post them on our social media pages.

Summing up all the above, to find a reliable outsourcing company, you need:

1. Find their website and look for case studies and expertise.
2. Check various B2B platforms like Clutch or GoodFirms to find the company’s page.
3. Check their social media like LinkedIn to find any recent awards or mentions of the company.
4. If all the foregoing is present, and you are satisfied with the available information or have any other questions - contact the company.
5. After the conversation and project estimation, you can make a final decision on whether you want to work on product development with a company or don’t.