How to Hire Development Team for a Startup

Each tech startup development company has faced the need to hire a dedicated software development team. Contrary to tech software development companies, startups might struggle with financing and maintaining an in-house team of software developers, who will be working on a single startup project.

Hiring a remote startup development team is not the only issue here. Apart from startup developers, you will also need an office, and other staff, working there. Additionally, when choosing an on-premises software development team for startups, you must deal with numerous departments and specialists from different fields.

Alternatively, there are successful remote startup IT team examples. They are proposing the same or even better results for less salary. Additionally, all the paperwork and other procedures like employee management and recruitment are the responsibility of an outsourced IT vendor.

Besides, these are not the only benefits, provided by the remote startup development team. What are the other advantages of a software development team for startups, and how to hire a startup development team?

Types of IT Outsourcing Startup Development Teams

When it comes to hiring or building a startup development team, the first and most important startup stage to take care of - is to set up clear requirements. Business owners, who want to find a startup development team, should understand what exactly they are looking for, before actually starting the hiring process.

Truth be told, a successful remote startup IT team is just a single example of app developers for hire.

Apart from the remote startup development team, we can name remote and offshore teams, team extension services, or freelance app developers for startups. The difference may seem not as crucial sometimes, but it can have a great impact on the overall efficiency of the startup development cycle.

Thus, you will have to decide which one is the most suited for your startup development. For a more balanced choice, you will need to learn the differences between all the foregoing cooperation methods.

• Freelance software developers are the cheapest and simplest solutions for any startup development. Freelancers are communicating with their clients directly. So, it is cheaper and simpler to work with a few individual startup developers. Yet, if you are looking for a full-fledged software development team for startups, freelance is most likely not the best choice: it might become a challenge to ensure communication and collaboration with a remote team of standalone individuals, who have nothing in common.

• Outsourced remote startup development teams are a great possible alternative. Just like freelancers, such software development teams for startups are performing specific and previously agreed tasks. Yet, it is possible to continue your cooperation by signing new agreements. Building a startup development team is more expensive. Good startup development teams are usually proposed as a service by IT outsourcing companies. Still, it is a very reasonable approach: if you aren’t satisfied with the results, you can easily build a new startup development team after the agreed tasks are done.

• Offshore dedicated software development team for startups. Finally, among the most common practices for hiring startup developers is to hire a startup development team offshore. It is similar to having a successful remote startup IT team, which is fully dedicated to the project. In other words, they have no other priorities except for your assignments.

Once again, which one to choose - is the client’s preference. It depends on the context of your future/ongoing startup development project, working specifics, and available resources. To help you with building a startup development team, we created a brief list of case studies for each possible solution.

Freelancer Vs IT Vendor for Startup Development: Why Even Bother?

The first question, that comes to mind is why people even bother dividing them into different categories. The answer is straightforward: third-party involvement.

So, the procedure of hiring developers for a startup differs a lot. For instance, a freelance startup developer for hire is easily reachable on various specialized online platforms and various social media networks like LinkedIn. At the same time, if you decide to choose a team extension service for your startup - you will have to find an IT vendor, who has a list of available startup developers.

When you have chosen freelance over full-time startup development specialist, then you will have to find and contact such a startup developer for hire on your own. This approach brings a lot of potential risks and requires more resources. At the same time, hiring a startup developer offshore is a much simpler and more automated process, which only requires finding an IT vendor, choosing candidates from the list, and interviewing startup developers.

Hiring developers for a startup on your own is also an option. The reason why it is undesirable is clear - startup team extension services and hiring freelancers are common for short-time contracts when a company requires extra hands to take care of some startup project aspects. So, if you find great startup developers, you want to keep them for longer to cover expenses.

Therefore, we won’t consider such a solution. The principle of hiring a full-time developer, as well as methods, approaches, and even reasons are very different from short-term project cooperation. But how to hire a software development team for startups, and when to consider hiring freelance software developers?

How to Hire a Software Development Team for a Startup?

Advantages of Hiring Freelance Startup Developers

It is hard to argue, that finding a freelance startup developer is easier and faster. Thanks to the existing freelance platforms for hiring, as well as the popularity of such services, both sides can easily find what they are looking for.

Freelancers are individuals, who are working as independent contractors. They are proposing specific services and own skills and earning money for a specific task or job. To make it simple, these are fully independent and are not obliged to anyone except for themselves and the startup development company, which they have an agreement with.

Thus, the first and most obvious conclusion, that can be made - it is cheaper to work with a freelance startup developer. For instance, finding a startup development vendor with a team extension feature means, that you will also have to pay extra money to this IT vendor for their assistance, including paperwork and other procedures. At the same time, cooperation with freelance startup developers includes only their salary and peer-to-peer agreement.

Moreover, due to the specifics of the freelance market and competition, such startup developers for hire are usually niche-experienced, meaning that they often work on various startup development projects, that have something in common.

Usually, it is an industry, to which these software projects are related. So, in addition to developing skills, freelance developers can also bring extra expertise in the field, upscaling your future product. These startup developers are also more flexible and might agree to work on the project at any time.

Besides, it can be easier to communicate with freelance startup developers, most likely you will use direct communication.

Freelance Startup Development Drawbacks

Quality assurance is a regular drawback of such a development process. When comparing freelance vs full-time employees, it is hard to deny that freelance startup developers commonly lack quality assurance. As a result, in case you are hiring freelance software developers for a startup, the final quality of the performed task depends on how lucky you are when finding a startup developer. Individual developers have less strict demands, therefore their attitude to quality assurance depends on them.

To add some more, the maintenance of the performed tasks is also commonly not included in the agreement. To rephrase it, the main job of the freelancer is to develop a specific agreed task. After doing so, the contract is considered fulfilled, and the chances that such a startup developer will maintain them are critically low.

It is worth remembering that freelance startup developers for hire may have reliability issues and bring some potential security threats. Freelance developers commonly work on multiple projects at the same time. Sometimes, they might not meet the deadlines or give priority to other projects they are engaged in. They can even become unavailable during the startup development, which will impact the overall efficiency of the startup development.

They work for a short period and on a limited number of tasks. Therefore, if freelance startup developers make some mistakes, related to security, they will not take responsibility for them, when the mistakes will get exposed. Finally, they can get access to private or vulnerable information during startup development and it is hard to predict whether they use it in the future.

Pros And Cons Of IT Outsourcing for Startup Development

Benefits of Hiring a Dedicated Development Team for Startup

Cooperation with a software vendor is almost the complete opposite of the freelancing model. At least, if we consider both methods' pros and cons.

Contrary to hiring a freelance startup developer, working with a software development team for a startup allows startup owners to avoid all the foregoing drawbacks.

First of all, maintenance is a must-have option for most such agreements. Therefore, even after the remote startup development team has completed its tasks, it will keep supporting the project to fix potential bugs or issues. It also affects the final quality assurance.

Besides, most such good startup development teams have guidelines and requirements for their engineers, including QA and security. It helps to save the reputation of software development contractors. So, developers will do their best to provide quality code samples.

Additionally, to avoid risks and according to governmental regulations like GDPR, IT outsourcing companies sign several other agreements like the Data Processing Agreement, ensuring the most responsible treatment for vulnerable data.

Another advantage of hiring dedicated software development team with an IT outsourcing company is that hired specialists are committed. They prioritize your tasks if engaged in a few startup development projects.

Disadvantages of IT Outsourcing for Startup Development

However, there are also disadvantages to hiring a startup development team.

As was mentioned before, it will be more expensive to find app developers for hire with the help of a third-party, than contacting them directly. Also, these developers are less flexible, when it comes to changing work time, or other conditions, i.e. they will work according to the terms of your agreement.

And what is the most crucial - when you build a startup development team with software vendors, you must ensure communication with remote startup developers. Communication and management procedures are the most vulnerable aspects of such collaboration types.

This is why, it will take your time and resources not only to implement a working communication strategy but also to figure out how to measure your software development vendor’s efficiency and productivity.

Frankly, one of the most valuable benefits of building a startup development team is that you can develop it as a Startup MVP. So, instead of hiring a startup development team for the full-time project, you can find a single startup developer, who will take care of each startup stage.

It will take more time, compared to the performance of a whole development team. Nevertheless, it will be much cheaper and gradually.

Remote Startup Development Team 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.

If you are willing to collaborate with freelance startup developers, you need to find a freelancer on specialized online platforms like Toptal, or UpWork. You simply look for app developers for hire, check their portfolio, proceed with an interview, and sign an agreement. To simplify such a process, these platforms propose multiple user-friendly features like ratings, feedback, various security guarantees, etc. So, finding what you are looking for won’t be an issue.

Alternatively, dedicated software development teams for startups and IT vendors are usually harder to find. For example, most remote software development teams for startups are proposed as a service by a particular IT company. Thus, it will be hard to find the portfolios of these startup developers bypassing the company.

Instead, most preparation and routine steps are performed in direct cooperation with the startup company, hiring a dedicated startup development team is one of the final stages of startup development. It might be difficult to understand how talented startup developers are and what technical skills they have.

However, startup owners with previous experience in such partnerships can easily find all the required information. A specific case is a better example of how to find a startup development team with an IT outsourcing company.

For instance, at Incora, we highly value the needs of our potential clients. 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 keep up with various B2B platforms, where you can find our company, and the feedback or ratings. We regularly post them on our social media pages.

To find a reliable outsourcing company, you need to:

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 decide whether you want to work on product development with a company or not.