Ask HN: Startup Quandary - build myself, hire or outsource

Background info on me: - Founded a few companies;some successful, some not - Mid 30s, 2 kids, wife mortgage, VP job - Decent 'hacker', former developer, current marketer, not to be trusted with developing solid code base

- Last startup: because of my other obligations I attempted to do everything as solo-founder during evenings and weekends. End results: Nearly 9 months to build useable beta; competitors started popping up around 4 months into my build; by launch, I was exchausted and lost most of my motivation...

TODAY:

I have a idea (probably my best/biggest yet) and am ready to begin prototyping. What I'm trying to decide is this:

I have no cofounder prospects, I still have obligations and while I technically "can" build a working prototype, I'm going to be slower than most / sloppy.

I am willing to commit my own funds; can raise some funds through business development grants/loans/etc.

So, the questions is: Does anyone have advice experience with:

- Outsourcing the development work of a start-up to freelancers or production houses? What are my rights, how exposed to the risk of stolen ideas, etc am I?

- Bringing on an unknown co-founder and/or hiring someone to build this as an employee before I'm even a full-timer...

- Or advice on what you'd do in the same situation.

Would love to discuss and am willing to share as much as possible...

Thanks.

It seems like you are writing a book about me.

On the short: I hired some contractors through elance/odesk - this was NOT the right thing to do. They lack motivation in what you're doing.

My advice: build it yourself, no matter how long it takes.

Yeah, that's been my approach in the past, but I'm definitely questioning that approach right now. Founding at this stage in life is definitely more difficult. In my early twenties, I dropped out of school, working 19hrs a day and was able to produce a prototype for what would become my full-time business for the subsequent 10 years in a matter of a few months ... But with my last startup, I worked every night from about 10pm-1:30am + "nap time" on weekends, and what should have been 1-2 months of work turned into 9 - with way more compromises than there should have been. Plus, the time spent tweaking the code actually limited the time I spent on some of the critical business / positioning decisions.

(A few times I actually rented a hotel in my city just to sequester myself and jump start the dev process)

In terms of elance/odesk, yes, I thought that would be a sketchy approach. I was actually more interested in production houses (like the kinds that build full-on apps) and contracting them. I've done similar in my day job, but in that case, they weren't so much building the business for us, but just building a marketing hook or an app extension to our core offering. I'm a little more skeptical about using them to build the whole thing...

The final approach I was considering was simply hiring my first employee as a work-from-home employee/cofounder. I'm wondering if anyone has ever been in this role, how they found it and if/where things went wrong with the "non-technical" cofounder? (I'm calling myself non-technical simply because I wouldn't be playing the role of developer -- I am in fact technical ...)

Sounds like a case where you would usually push through by yourself, but given what happened last time I think you would be better getting some extra help and getting the product out sooner.

I know a couple of outsourcing companies so I can give you a few pointers, good companies have NDAs and other contracts in place to protect you and your IP, usually they have US presence and they have workers on aligned timezones. I can say such companies are not rock bottom cheap but the quality and security it comes with them might be worth every penny (while also being cheaper than getting a full US team).

If you like I can pass you a few contacts in case you'll like to go this path.

Ruthlessly strip out all features until hurts. Then build it yourself. Launch. Rinse and Repeat.

Put up a landing page now to gauge interest and start the marketing effort by building a list.