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Here's a timeous post via Bob Walsh: http://47hats.com/2011/07/outsourcing-101-for-startup-founders/ http://47hats.com/2011/07/outsourcing-101-for-startup-found

Here's a timeous post via Bob Walsh: http://47hats.com/2011/07/outsourcing-101-for-startup-founders/ http://47hats.com/2011/07/outsourcing-101-for-startup-founde... It does a good job of breaking out approaches for different skills, considering timezones etc. One idea: "Hire one or two people from Philippines for $3/h to help you hire someone. Ask them to post your job on the different websites I cited above and to filter the good from the bad based on the criteria you give them. I found my own Ruby on Rails developer this way and we have been working together two months and I can't be happier. It costed me $20 to get two people look for a developer for me."

davidw 15y ago
That's a pretty good article, and has some of what "Start Small, Stay Small" says. I guess what's tripping me up is that for something like customer support, you want to put on a really good face, not have some guy answering with poor English 36 hours later. I'm starting to wonder how that might work economically. I began trying to find people right away, figuring (correctly) that I'd want to start working on this part of the business from the get-go, because for me it's one of the most difficult parts to figure out. So far, I'm not terribly impressed, and am wondering if I just have expectations that are too high, or what.
- richardw 15y ago
  I know what you mean. I tried outsourcing some support when my app first went live. I couldn't do it because the requests I was getting just needed me to support it, partly because many questions were (and still are) often things I need to think about to answer well. I guess the solution there is to, over time: dumb down the support required, transfer the remaining knowledge required to the support person (policy and feature documents), accept that some things just have to be answered be us. Shout if you find a solution to that :)

davidw 15y ago

That's a pretty good article, and has some of what "Start Small, Stay Small" says. I guess what's tripping me up is that for something like customer support, you want to put on a really good face, not have some guy answering with poor English 36 hours later. I'm starting to wonder how that might work economically. I began trying to find people right away, figuring (correctly) that I'd want to start working on this part of the business from the get-go, because for me it's one of the most difficult parts to figure out. So far, I'm not terribly impressed, and am wondering if I just have expectations that are too high, or what.

richardw 15y ago
I know what you mean. I tried outsourcing some support when my app first went live. I couldn't do it because the requests I was getting just needed me to support it, partly because many questions were (and still are) often things I need to think about to answer well. I guess the solution there is to, over time: dumb down the support required, transfer the remaining knowledge required to the support person (policy and feature documents), accept that some things just have to be answered be us. Shout if you find a solution to that :)