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Comment by wibbily | Hacker News Reader

Currently at a startup that did the same thing wrt having their app built overseas. Protip: don't. Endless bullshit, excruciating trying to get anything out of them. We ended up with an app just like this guy's, locked aspect ratio and all.

If I find another startup whose product is an app, and they can't find a local developer to write that app, I'm running. Why outsource your core product!?

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It's the classic case of believing that ideas at 90% of the value and execution is something you can delegate. Think Kendall from Succession.

This is very common. Lofty idea folks often see developers as a commodity, so why not just outsource to the cheapest bidder? You might luck out and get a smart person who doesn't know what they're worth yet... but, 9 out of 10 times, you get what you pay for.

If you don't know the value of what you are buying you are most likely to get even less than what you payed for. In the story they basically got scammed by overseas shops who probably pocketed most of the money and farmed out the effort to minimally-skilled and minimally-paid developers who were in way over their heads.

Totally true. If you can't supervise the work, at least minimally, you're going to be taken advantage of.

I think there are ways to outsource too. Outsource to an international team that benefits from your success rather than viewing you as a money-making goose. Build a different incentive model, and give away some equity. Sell them the dream.

Because there are legions of people out there who want to be "entrepreneurs", so they come up with "business ideas". They can't make these ideas into reality by themselves, as they lack all technical skill. This lack of skill also means that they can not manage a project, as they lack a basic understanding of how software project works.

I can only guess, but maybe they think the product is just something you pay some of those "other people" to whip up, and the whole game is about your business and marketing and metrics etc. The app is just some necessary cost that must be minimized to check the box on their business template.

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