10 Stories That Will Surprise You About Outsourcing Engineering
VCs will tell you not to do it, but this blog looks at 10 stories that will surprise you about outsourcing engineering. It includes the success story of Calendly and Alibaba, which are now worth billions.
Aleksandr Volodarsky
Insights into growing a $15M startup. CEO of https://t.co/XUTTuzWPg2 (marketplace of vetted engineers)
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VCs will tell you: "Don't do it"
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
These founders didn't listen and outsourced their engineering. Now they are worth billions.
10 stories that will surprise you: -
1/ Calendly is a well-known but my favorite story.
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
In 2013, @TopeAwotona outsourced the MVP to Ukrainian developers.
He stayed with the team (throughout the revolution and the start of the war in 2014), and they shipped.
Today:
• 10M users
• $100M/yr rev
• $3B valuation -
2/ Skype
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
The founders hired Estonian engineers to build the video and voice tool.
At its peak, it had 300M+ users.
In 2011, Microsoft acquired it for $8.5B -
3/ Alibaba
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
Jack Ma, the co-founder, outsourced the site development to US engineers because he couldn’t find skilled developers in China.
Today, it:
• has ~47% of the eCommerce market share in China
• makes $120B+/yr in revenue
• has a market cap of $220B+ -
4/ WhatsApp
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
The founders hired a development team in Eastern Europe to build the first version of the messaging app.
The reason was to minimize the app development costs.
In 2014, Facebook bought it for $19.3B
Today, it has 2B+ users in 180+ countries. -
5/ Uber
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
Uber started its operations as an Excel sheet.
When @travisk decided to build the 1st version of the app, he hired a dev shop instead of an in-house eng team.
Today, it's worth $60B+ and makes $31B+/yr in revenue. -
6/ Upwork
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
ODesk and Elance merged to form Upwork.
To build the initial version of Upwork, the founders hired freelancers from their own marketplace. Today, it makes $600M+yr in rev
We also hire freelancers from our own marketplace ;) Should start making $600m/year in no time -
7/ Basecamp
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
Initially, the founders outsourced the app's development to remote engineers.
Today, 75K+ businesses use the project management tool.
Revenue: $150M/yr -
8/ Remember Klout?
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
The founder Joe Fernandez hired a Singaporean dev team to build the MVP.
It allowed him to bootstrap for a long time. -
9/ MySQL
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
Initially, the management team outsourced the development of open-source software.
Today, it's run on millions of servers and used by Amazon, NASA, PayPal, and other billion-dollar companies. -
10/ Expensify
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
Founders partnered with a software team to build the back-end infrastructure.
It allowed the team to focus on the front-end tech and grow the business.
Revenue: $169M+/yr -
That's the wrap
— Aleksandr Volodarsky (@volodarik) March 27, 2023
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