With a budget at hand tech startups need to develop the technology to meet their short-term development goals and secure the long-term strategy. They need skilled developers, who would work on the project like it was their own and would be loyal to the company long-term. Despite the common view, many startups decide to initially outsource IT to a development team in an offshore center, because it operates within a large talent pool and not only brings expertise in allocating the right talent for specific tasks, but also shares accumulated in-house knowledge of best practices, which can help startups move in the most efficient way.
Successful well-funded startups have elaborated an effective way of motivating both their offshore dedicated team and their outsourcing provider so that all parties work together as one team towards a common goal
One of the most effective motivation strategies we have experienced on the market is a startup assigning its offshore developers same stock options as to its in-house team to ensure that they are motivated to do their very best to contribute to company’s growth and success in the long run. Startups use the same strategy to motivate IT outsourcing providers as well, assigning shares to them too. Even though the idea sounds simple, unfortunately it is not a common practice, but it has shown significant success over the years of cooperation with our clients, who decided to implement it.
This motivation strategy also helps outsourcing providers to attract successful highly experienced developers to join a startup’s offshore team
A strategy of adding offshore developers to the list of company’s shareholders makes it easier to attract successful experienced programmers that are looking for more challenges and larger opportunities, while staying in their home country with their families and within their social circles.
Additionally, this strategy creates an atmosphere of a genuine startup environment on the side of the offshore team, which is very attractive for many developers who are encouraged by the recent startup boom and are planning to start their own companies in the future.
Another side benefit of this motivation technique is that an offshore team can serve as a continuous proven source of talent for a startup’s in-house R&D to support its growth
At any point a startup decides to enhance its in-house development it has a proven pool of talent in the offshore team that can serve as an alternative to recruitment in the domestic labor market. By hiring best performing talent onsite the company also keeps all the knowledge about the product within the company long-term and provides career growth opportunities for its team offshore to secure stable development. Many outsourcing companies will agree to transfer some of their developers to the client’s site because it usually helps to build strong connections between the two destinations and stimulates further development of the offshore team.
