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Have any Y Combinator startups outsourced coding to China to get up and running faster?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Have any Y Combinator startups outsourced coding to China to get up and running faster?

#3
I would like to know if any of the ycombinator startups have outsourced code to China? I have an idea and would like to apply for the next round of funding but have limited coding experience. Is outsourcing some coding to China or similar an option or are there major issues with this approach?

Re: Have any Y Combinator startups outsourced coding to China to get up and running faster?

#4
post #3

I would like to know if any of the ycombinator startups have outsourced code to China? I have an idea and would like to apply for the next round of funding but have limited coding experience. Is outsourcing some coding to China or similar an option or are there major issues with this approach?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024

It could work if your idea is good enough and simple enough, but it's rather unlikely. You need to create very, very specific documentation to get good results from outsourced Asian/Eastern European programmers. You also have almost no chance of getting funding from Y Combinator if you are not a hacker and have no hackers on your team.

The site consensus answer to your dilemna is to learn how to hack. Ruby or Python are the languages of choice here. Ruby has this nice learning IDE available, if you feel like playng around right now. http://hacketyhack.net/

Re: Have any Y Combinator startups outsourced coding to China to get up and running faster?

#5
The merits of out-sourcing are debatable in general, but where startups are concerned out-sourcing coding is just plain crazy. Startups, more than any other sort of company, need to be fast, need to do things well, and need to have very efficient internal communication; the likelyhood of any of these happening decreases the further away the founders are from the people who are doing the coding.

If all the coding is being done by founders, things have a decent chance of working; if all the coding is being done by people hired by the founders, the odds are pretty slight; but if all of the coding is being done by people hired by a company hired by the founders -- i.e., by people two steps away -- there's almost no chance whatsoever that the coders will have either (a) sufficient motivation, or (b) understand the founders' vision. (Of course, the same thing works in the opposite direction -- if the founders are two steps away from the people writing the code, there's almost no chance that the founders are going to understand what's going on.)

And that's not even getting into the difficulties of working with people who have a different culture, a different language, and are working in a different timezone.

Out-sourcing development might save you money; but it's distinctly not going to get a startup up and running faster.

Re: Have any Y Combinator startups outsourced coding to China to get up and running faster?

#6
post #3

I would like to know if any of the ycombinator startups have outsourced code to China? I have an idea and would like to apply for the next round of funding but have limited coding experience. Is outsourcing some coding to China or similar an option or are there major issues with this approach?

Major issues.

Re: Have any Y Combinator startups outsourced coding to China to get up and running faster?

#7
Thanks for the comments, I am busy with Agile Web Development with Rails. I was just wondering if it had been done as I have experience writing use cases and functional specs. Thought it could be a way of expediting things if there are only two coders but I understand the issues presented here.

Re: Have any Y Combinator startups outsourced coding to China to get up and running faster?

#10
It's a terrible idea. I was in a startup that opened a China office, for about what it cost to hire 2 quality engineers in the U.S. However, the China office produced nothing. Moreover, it sucked up a lot of management time, so managers weren't actually around to, well, manage.
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