“With Bloglines, I had an accountant, at least for a good part of it, who was fairly cheap. One of the hassles of ONElist was that I was the one manging the books the first year, as well as answering the 200 support emails every night, as well as doing all of this other stuff. I guess I’m torn with how cheap do you want to go with a startup. Having an accountant is kind of a nice frill.
I also think a lot of people don’t know about all these outsourcing sites, which are absolutely wonderful.
So, if I wanted to put together a presentation and I needed a couple of graphics, I put up a proposal on ELance and ended up working with some lady in Australia, who turned things around in 5 hours, for $40.” — Mark Fletcher (Founders at Work)
Outsourcing. Everyone talks about it. Some are scared by it.
When is outsourcing useful?
Let’s start with the negation: “When is outsourcing not useful?”. There’s an easy mantra to this question:
What does this mean? If you’re developing software do not outsource software developing!
If you’re producing chocolate do not outsource chocolate production!
When it’s useful?
Some people may think: “When I outsource X then it will never reach my requirements.” Attention! If you are competent in doing X, sure do it. Otherwise, choose wisely if you should do it.
I’ll take the accountant example:
An accountant will require two hours to do your task.
You will require five hours to do the same task.
Ratio: 2:5 respectively 1:2,5
Even if the accountant will cost two times more than you earn per hour, he will be cheaper. You will save money and keep your nerves. Great!