skip to content

← back to the plays

independence3 unconnected · 2 more authors in those circles
applies to

b2b, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

5 claims · 5 articles · 4 receipts

window

2020-08-04 → 2022-10-03

3 builders who never spoke to each other

Buy capacity instead of building or hiring it

License the feature from another small company's API and hand it to customers as an included extra, and pay an experienced contractor by the hour to keep the release cadence moving while you are elsewhere. Two people plus a dozen specialists bought by the hour covers more ground than the equivalent payroll.

The method

  1. 01

    License a feature from another small company's API instead of building it, and hand it to every customer at no extra charge as a value add.

  2. 02

    Hire an experienced part-time contractor to keep the release cadence going, so the product keeps moving while you are away.

  3. 03

    Stay two people and buy hours from more than a dozen specialists rather than hiring anyone full time.

  4. 04

    Hire an outside identity agency for the logo even if you employ designers, unless one of them actually specialises in it.

  5. 05

    Buy the same brief from several cheap freelancers at once and compare what comes back before you commit to a visual direction.

What it returned

  • 2020

    Fathom added uptime monitoring to all accounts in June 2020 on top of PingPing's infrastructure, arranged since February that year, with no price increase.

  • Zue shipped a Pegasus release adding multi-language support while writing almost none of the code himself

  • SparkToro used contractors, agencies and consultants for podcast classification, conversion rate work, taxes, accounting, art, UI and UX, on the bias that a few hours of the best people you can afford beats a full-timer you could only afford at lower quality.

  • Four agencies considered, one hired, dozens of concepts reviewed and narrowed to four

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.

More in product

all product plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.