Honestadvice

I don't have a "startup" but I run a business that utilizes freelancers. The idea that freelancers can't work in an agile manner and respond quickly is nonsense. Several of my best freelancers are on retainer. I lock in availability and they love the guaranteed income.

Sure, I don't have 40 hours a week from each of them but there's nothing magical about a 40 hour work week. Agile sprints are time bound and time bound doesn't mean "40 hours".

By the way, most startups don't have an idealized feedback loop where market feedback is coming in at a rapid pace on a constant basis and your developers are busy 5 days a week responding to that feedback.

Most startups take longer to get going than the founders would like. If you're paying a salary to your technical co-founder a lot of it is likely going to go to waste because you probably won't be able to utilize them 100%. And even if they're not taking a salary they're going to get bored (and might jump ship) if they're expecting things to take off overnight.

1. The goal of a startup is to build a viable business.

2. When you're bootstrapping you don't have the luxury of an "extended learning process."

3. There is absolutely no reason a non-technical founder can't "learn enough about the market and technology to bridge them." Just because you can't build an app doesn't mean you don't understand technology, and just because you can build an app doesn't mean you can understand a market.

4. If you're relying on a technical co-founder with no domain expertise to bridge your market and technology for you, you're going to fail 99% of the time because it's not going to happen.

5. Notwithstanding the point that a co-founder can run off with your idea too, if you're only coming to the table with an idea you're probably doomed anyway. It's not about ideas. It's about domain expertize, industry relationships, sales know-how and the motivation to execute. Most freelancers and people who are going to come on board as co-founders would be running their own startups if they had those things.

6. Facebook/Zuck are usually unrealistic examples for most founders.

Two lessons from situations like this...

1. Prefer freelancers to co-founders.

Having a technical co-founder is sexy but partnerships are tricky and you don't need to start with one. Using freelancers isn't risk free (nothing is) but there are a few advantages:

- You will probably have a lot more control over cost and schedule. A lot of freelance developers are willing to work on a fixed price basis if you have a reasonable enough spec, and in my experience freelancers are usually far better at estimating cost and schedule because it's virtually impossible to be successful as a freelancer if you can't develop cost and schedule estimates. If you encounter a freelance develop who can't provide cost estimates and schedules you're not dealing with a professional.

- If you select somebody who has been working as a freelancer full time for at least several years straight and who has happy client references (ask for these!), you probably don't have to worry about getting an email letting you know that they're joining Google. Actually at a certain point somebody who has been freelancing for a while is not going to be considered an attractive employee by a major company except under rare circumstances.

- Finding good freelance developers can be difficult, but in this market it's less difficult than finding a good developer who wants to work full time for a startup/company as a cofounder/employee.

2. Carefully consider your stack.

Some of the sexiest stacks (RoR, Node, etc.) are a bootstrapped founder's worst nightmare. The labor pools are smaller, and the rates are higher. LAMP isn't sexy but in a bind you're not going to have a problem finding a half decent freelance LAMP developer at a reasonable rate.