I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

I can see why this wouldn't directly apply to most people:

1) Most bootstrappers don't have the money to pay someone else full time.

2) Most bootstrappers don't have enough experience to know what to build themselves, much less be able to communicate to someone else to do it.

3) Most developers without years of experience are overconfident in their ability to communicate and manage people.

Glad it has worked for this guy, though.

I wonder what the general opinion is on legal protection (such signing a contractor agreement) when working with someone in another country. I figure it must be hard to enforce, and you'd mainly be working based on trust. But, it seems like having some sort of legal agreement in place, regardless of how difficult it would be to enforce, would be prudent.

Anyone have experience with this?

I've considered outsourcing part of development before. But always gave up after thinking how hard would be to find someone who is actually good. And to be honest, after reading that the author had to first hire two girls just to look for a developer. It doesn't really gets me any more excited. Just thinking about all the useful developing time that I'd wasting looking for a good developer. It just doesn't seem worth it.

The author having found a great guy after 1 week for only $20 sounds to me like he got lucky. And that's not considering the side tasks he gave to the developer just to test him. And the other guy he hired before but didn't like. Summing all that, I'd assume that on average it would take at least two months just looking for someone good and finally get started working on a real project.

Does anyone else got similar good experiences like the author and could confirm that it's actually not that hard? Or did the author just get lucky?

I hadn't seen that initially, but I agree that makes it seem a bit suspicious. A testimonial to the benefits of outsourcing by someone running an site advertising "frictionless outsourcing" is not exactly a disinterested analysis; sort of like a whitepaper on outsourcing from Accenture. Doesn't mean it's wrong, but does, I agree, mean that he probably intended the writeup to be positive, even before starting.

I just have to question the quality of the code one risks receiving when outsourcing; sure you can get lucky and find a great guy but in all likelihood it would take a few iterations to find someone worthwhile. All the while you'd be spending time and money finding a developer & losing precious time working on the product at hand.