Founder Fresh Takes #4 - Getting it all done
Effective Outsourcing
A collaborative project by David Giltner and Paul West
When starting a company, there are a seemingly infinite number of tasks that must be completed.
There are the obvious big tasks like product development and finding your first customers, but smaller tasks like building a website, creating product literature, and accounting for the money you spend cannot be ignored.
How do you get everything done when you don't yet have enough startup capital to hire a staff?
It is tempting for founders to try to do all of these tasks themselves.
This can be particularly true for the scientist entrepreneur, as our academic training often grooms an independent Do-It-Yourself mindset.
But trying to do it all yourself is usually not a good idea. Not only is there not enough time for one person to do everything well, most founders also don’t have the breadth of skills required to do it all at the quality level required.
A good way around this problem is to hire contractors through websites like Upwork or Fiverr. On sites like these you can find contractors from around the world that can help you with a wide array of tasks ranging from administrative support to product literature design to software or hardware design.
When you list a project on one of these sites, you will typically get several dozen responses. Most of the applicants will have a professional looking profile and talk like they can do a great job for you. The amount they charge is generally no indicator of quality.
This can seem a bit overwhelming, and it can be difficult to figure out who to select. But if you don’t hire competent contractors, you might end up wishing you had tried to do it all yourself.
How to manage that risk?
We suggest that for each of the projects you contract out, you split out a small subset of the full project that will stand as a test project. Once you select a contractor, give them that test project first so you can assess their skill level.
If they complete the test project with high quality, on budget, and on time, give them the rest of the project. If they do not prove themselves qualified to work for your company, pick another contractor and repeat the process.
With this process you will build a set of contractors who can cover the tasks that you don’t have the time or the skills to complete and do it for a reasonable cost.
This will carry you until you are able to hire employees to take over these tasks.
