Cheryl Ye Oh FI SG Fall2012

8/3/2019 Cheryl Ye Oh FI SG Fall2012

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Outsourcing, Partners & Suppliers

by Cheryl Yeoh (@cherylyeoh),

Co-Founder & CEO, CityPockets Inc.

The Founder Institute



Pros of Outsourcing

Talent for startups

± Hire jack of all trades (business) & specialists (tech)

± Do not hire operations people

± Hire interns or get a virtual assistant

Deferral

± Every hire can be disruptive

± Look at budget / employees how much can you afford?

± Read Netflix & Zappos culture book



Pros of Outsourcing

Saves time & retain culture:

(i) specialized areas ± e.g. SEO,

PR, etc.)

(ii) Outsource boring & non-core stuff



Pros of Outsourcing

More focus on core stuff:



Pros of Outsourcing

Speed to Market

Built v1.0 of CityPockets

in 2 mths (part time)

$800: Designer from

Elance(Pakistan)



Pros of Outsourcing

Speed to Market

Fake it until you make it

$0.10 per page

For data entry



Cons of Outsourcing

Costs money (per hour)

± $5/hr still costs money

D

ifficulty & Time Consuming ± Easier for founder to do & management overhead

Where outsourcing fails

± Product, Core Design, Hiring, Marketing, Strategy

± Would use 99designs & elance for prototyping but not to

build a company



Outsourcing Decision Matrix

One-Time Repeating

Core Self

(e.g. product, ux, hiring, etc)

Hire

(e.g. design, iphone

development, customer

service, etc)

Non-Core Consult

(e.g. scrum process, SEO,

logo, CTO, etc )

Outsource

(e.g. PR, HR & accounting,

customer service, data entry,

quality check, scrapping,

PSDtoHTML, content, etc)

Tasks you can outsource: Repeating, Verifiable, Well-defined, Non-core



$800: Prototype

design from

Elance (Pakistan)



$0: Design

services from

Viget Labs

(sponsored byincubator)



$12,000: Hired

YCombinator

preferred designer

from Montreal + UXExpert Consultant

from NYC



What to use

Solvate (high touch but expensive) - ex McKinseys who only

want to work for a few hours (ppt. decks)

Elance & Odesk (low touch but cheap) a lot of engineers

and designers but non successful. Good for data entry.

Tip: Trial first & be as anal as you want to

Usertesting.com for usability tests

Mechanical turk (amazon) basically an API where at the otherend is a person doing research (e.g. 4sq API - hired 10K ppl for 30 mins)

Crowdflower experts at mechanical turk; consultant for a lot of

companies



Good place to start

Initial Design

Usability pay non-users $20 (low end testing) and get someone

who is a top 1K user to use your site (watch them) Feedback hire interns

Data entry / QA

Customer Service Phone surveying



Lessons from Hiring Contractors

Dont hire friends & family!

Expect all outsourced development or design work to

be thrown away later iPhone & Android Development



CityPockets iPhone v1.0

Vendor: Friend (Yoga App)

Time to Build: 8 weeks

Cost: $14,200 (Budget: $10,000)

Features:

Ability to retrieve vouchers stored on CityPockets

M

istakes: Lack of due diligence, detailed SOW, time-sensitive

milestones, break-up contracts, daily stand-ups




Vendor: TwoToasters (GoTryItOn, GateGuru, BiteHunter, Yipit, etc)

Time to Build: 6 weeks / Cost: $27,450 (@ $150/hour)

Features: Added secondary marketplace (buy & sell)




Internal Hire: $70K / year ($12K) + $3,680 for UI & UX

Time to Build: 8 weeks

Features: Added Instant Deals, Yelp Reviews, Add Accounts



Books & Blogs

4-hour workweek (Tim Ferris is a maniac on

outsourcing)

The Goal

Netflix Book

Blog.crowdflower.com

Behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com

Documents

Cheryl Ye Oh FI SG Fall2012