The Untechnical Founder Death Spiral – Stage 2

This is the third in a series of posts where we’re talking about some of the most common pitfalls that un-technical founders face when starting a technology company.  I’ve called this the Un-Technical Founder Death Spiral because once you get started, it’s very hard to pull out and course-correct.

You can read the first post here and the second here.

As a quick review, we identified three stages:

  • Stage 1 – The “Find a Friend to Do Work For Free” Stage
  • Stage 2 – The “Outer Mongolia” Stage
  • Stage 3 – The “Raise Money and Hire a Contractor” Stage

Let’s talk about Stage 2 – Outer Mongolia.

After a difficult first stage, where your attempt to get your project done for free fails and leaves you frustrated, you start looking for the next best thing. You manage to scrape together a few thousand dollars, and you wander into the world of offshore developers.

The Mythology of Offshore Development

There are two pervasive myths regarding the use of offshore developers.  The first is that there are amazingly talented people all over the world who work for a quarter to a third of US wages.  The second is that all offshore developers will steal your idea and you’ll be ruined.

I’ve been working with developers all over the world for over 10 years now, and it used to be true that you could find remarkable people who were way less expensive to hire. Those days are more or less over. The demand for excellent developers is so great, and the willingness of big companies to build offices in every corner of the world, has driven wages up across the globe. While it might be bad for you, this is, in a macro-economic sense, a good thing. So if you’re thinking of hiring an offshore developer strictly because of price, you’re going to be disappointed.

The second, and perhaps more disturbing, myth about using offshore developers is that they are all thieves looking to prey on the innocent. That’s a pretty cynical view of humanity, and in all of my experience it’s never happened to me. Ever. It turns out that people living elsewhere live lives pretty much like you and me.  They’re trying to make a better life, raise a family, and all the other things that we do.

Why Offshore Won’t Work For You

Even if you accept that you’re going to be paying more than you expected, and if you’re OK with sharing your idea with someone halfway around the world who you’ve never met, the chances that this path will work for you are slim to none.

Here’s why:

  1. It’s extremely difficult to manage a technology project to a successful conclusion under optimal circumstances, where the people you’re working with are sitting next to you and speak the same language. You get neither of these advantages with someone halfway around the world.
  2. Managing a project across multiple timezones can be a real challenge. It requires a level of intentionality about getting together at regularly scheduled times, as well as being able to manage and evaluate work asynchronously.
  3. The level of work that must go in at the front of the project to properly define expectations, and to ensure those expectations are very well understood, is probably 2-3 times what it takes to get a project going with someone closer to home.

In short, you must be excellent at both specifying the requirements and  managing the workflow of your project. These things take time and practice to get right. Don’t bet your project on needing to nail this the first time.

The last thing I’ll say here is that, even if you manage to work through all of the above issues, it’s going to be slower and harder than you think it will. It took me a couple of years to put the right processes in place for finding, evaluating, and then effectively managing a remote team. I made a lot of mistakes and did a lot of things twice or three times while I was learning.

By now, if you’re in Stage 2, you’re nodding your head and saying “Yep, that happened to me.”

What’s Your Next Move?

If you’ve already engaged with an offshore developer, and you’re struggling to get the results you’re after, you’ve got a few options on how to move forward.

The first thing I would recommend, just as we talked about in our last post, is that you stop the project until you can understand exactly where the problems are. If you don’t, you’re just going to continue to light money on fire and be angry.

Once you’ve paused the project, here’s a checklist to help you make the best next move.

  • Are you having to explain seemingly small issues two, three, even four times?
  • Is the work product you’re getting back what you’re asking for, or is there a consistent miss in what was agreed upon and what was delivered?
  • Is the developer consistently missing agreed-upon deadlines?

All of these symptoms point to a fundamental communication problem, which in my experience is the #1 cause of Stage 2 breakdowns. The problem may be you, it may be the developer, but it doesn’t really matter. If it’s not working, it’s not working.

Better to preserve your cash and seek out a technical founder to join your team, or at the very least find a trusted advisor who can help you navigate these critical decisions.

Stay tuned next time when we talk about Stage 3 of the Un-Technical Founder Death Spiral.

I also wrote an e-book that you can download for free that explores the topic of hiring and building global teams in depth. Find it here. It’s free. No strings attached.