Software development outsourcing is often a viable option for startups to keep their product development timely and cost-effective. However, a lot of experienced project managers consider this development solution an inefficient and questionable decision.
Our market analysts at Gravum understand that the actual situation is quite the opposite. Countless outsourcing cases brought millions in revenue to the companies. Let’s discover the 5 world-famous corporations that started as the startups and leaned towards the software product development outsourcing.
1. GitHub: Ruby Software Development Outsourcing
GitHub is the biggest hosting company in the United States, supporting the Git version control functionality. Founded in 2008, it grew to become the most known service provider in its scope. Microsoft acquired the company for $7.5 billion in 2018. But what is the true story behind the success?
The CEO of GitHub, Chris Wanstrath, met Scott Chacon, the GitHub CIO at a Ruby meetup that took place in San Francisco. Chris saw the potential in Scott, as he understood the concept of Gists – the main sharing component of GitHub. This is why he hired Chris to outsource the Gist back-end and to assist him with the GitHub software product development. This kick-started the GitHub and paved its way to the GitHub success we witness nowadays.
2. Slack: Canadian Dedicated Development Team That Made It All Happen
Back in the day when Slack merely was a beta version of the messenger, the company needed to come up with a way to launch the product. The unstyled prototype with rough design concepts couldn’t make it without a dedicated team.
And this is exactly what Slack representatives decided to do: they hired an outsourcing team to push their product beyond the limits of the beta version. Was it a suitable solution? Well, here are the facts on Slack development history:
- Slack received $250 million in investments with $5 billion evaluation in July 2017. Pretty decent results for the product that once experienced the challenge of getting out of the beta;
- The user coverage reached 8 million users in May 2018, including the large enterprises like IBM, BBC, and Oracle;
- The market capitalization of Slack grew to $17.4 billion to July 2019.
As you can see, hiring a quality dedicated development team can be quite a serious step towards transforming your software product into a successful business.
3. Upwork: Hire Software Development Outsourcing
Our business consultants at Gravum remember the days when Elance and oDesk were the top freelance platforms. However, as time passed, the issues of workflow organization and payment protection arose. This is where Upwork entered the scene.
Upwork is a merger of these two freelance platforms that brings advanced customer and freelancer experience to the users. It’s much more efficient now to hire with Upwork than in was with oDesk and Elance back in the day. The thing is, the company couldn’t reach these enhancements just by pressing the “Merge oDesk and Elance” button. Someone had to develop these new features and improve the existing ones.
This is where it becomes interesting. Here’s the kicker: Upwork hired their 150 of the 200 members of their dedicated team on oDesk, the foundation platform of Upwork itself. It means three-quarters of the dev staff were the outsourcing freelancers.
This is how Upwork reaped the benefits of the former platform versions. The company used the software development outsourcing powers it generated for the better part of its own development.
4. Alibaba: Competition Beyond Chinese Internet
Alibaba has started as a Chinese eCommerce startup. The outsourcing team was a rare find in those days, so Alibaba outsourced its software development mostly to the United States. This helped the company to keep the head above the water and withstand the market rivalry. The industry giants like eBay were the reason why Alibaba had to improve as fast as it was practically possible.
Now we know Alibaba as the international holding company specialized in eCommerce technologies. This corporation can boast of $453 billion capitalization value. We believe Alibaba could hardly skyrocket that way without early dedicated team involvement.
5. WhatsApp: Eastern Europe Outsourcing As Success Move
WhatsApp is an exceedingly popular chatting freeware owned by Facebook. Countless users, cutting-edge messaging features – all this means you can find a decent user experience in WhatsApp application. Let’s discover the WhatsApp growth story and find out how they succeeded.
The company began climbing the stairway to the top of the industry in a small cozy office in Mountain View, California. Having 35 employees – 30 full-time and 5 part-time ones – WhatsApp couldn’t cope with the workload. This is where Eastern Europe developers came in handy.
WhatsApp received $250 000 in the seed round. This case shows that software development outsourcing in Ukraine, Russia, or any similar Eastern Europe country is often a credible solution. It’s timely, quality and cost-effective in most cases when you work with a respected contractor.
The Bottom Line
Development outsourcing is efficient in all software development stages. However, early outsourcing often unleashes the greatest potential, especially in agile startups.
If you are looking for the quality outsourcing vendor, reach out to our Gravum development experts. We provide professional software development outsourcing services and always strive to make an IT-industry a better place.
