Jordan Hill’s Post

The decision to build in-house capabilities versus outsourcing depends on your company’s stage, priorities, and the specific function in question. Here’s a breakdown: 1. Finance: • Early Stage: Outsourcing (e.g., a fractional CFO) can be cost-effective to handle basics like bookkeeping, financial modeling, and investor reporting. • Scaling: Transition to in-house as cash flow and complexity grow. An in-house CFO will have a deeper strategic role and better alignment with company culture. 2. Technical: • MVP Phase: Outsourcing tech development can speed up time-to-market and reduce costs, but only if you have a strong technical advisor or a CTO to manage quality and direction. • Product Market Fit: Consider in-house for better control, IP protection, and to build a tech culture. 3. Biz Dev: • Early Stage: Founders should handle this initially to build relationships and understand market dynamics. • Scaling: Outsource specific tasks (e.g., lead generation) but build in-house for long-term strategic partnerships. 4. HR: • Early Stage: Outsourcing administrative HR (e.g., payroll) is standard, but founder-led recruitment ensures cultural fit and vision alignment. • Scaling: In-house HR for talent management, compliance, and shaping company culture. Key Considerations: • Cost & Control: Outsourcing can save on costs and provide flexibility, but less control can be risky. • Complexity & Scale: More complex functions (e.g., strategy, core tech) benefit from in-house as they become central to success. Ultimately, balance is key: leverage external expertise to scale quickly, but bring core functions in-house as your company evolves.

As a startup, do you need to hire for every role? Nope! Turns out, you don’t! At the start, you can focus on what matters most. For example, at Scale To Global, we help startups with internationalisation. This involves research, partnerships, and business development. Here’s why this approach works: - Efficiency: 🚀 You can enter new markets quickly without building a full team. - Cost-Effective: 🤑 Save resources by not hiring for every role. - Expertise: 🔬 Leverage specialised companies for direct sales and other tasks. So, before you think about hiring, consider strategic partnerships. It’s a fantastic way to grow without overextending and scale internally at the right time. There are great companies out there for basically any need a startup might have: sales, legal, part time CFO services, you name it.. Hiring a team is great, but expensive and it's hard to find the right fit. So it does not need to be the first avenue - especially at the start. What strategies have you found effective for entering new markets? #Startups #BusinessDevelopment #Strategy #HRtech #Internationalstartups #TechStartups

Startup Assistance Services!! One of my friends is Specialized in assisting startup companies with setting up policies, hiring staff on a project basis, and providing administrative support. If you know anyone who might benefit from these services, I would greatly appreciate it if you could let me know or pass along my information. Your help in connecting me with potential clients would be invaluable. #startup #hiring #financialmanagement #HRconsultant ##StartupSupport #PolicySetup #ProjectHiring #AdministrativeSupport #WorkflowEfficiency #FinancialManagement #BusinessServices #StartupConsulting #EntrepreneurSupport For more details DM

A startup consultant is a valuable asset for new businesses, offering expertise and guidance to streamline operations and accelerate growth. With a focus on strategic planning, market research, financial modeling, and networking, consultants provide a roadmap for success. Their objective perspective and industry-specific knowledge help startups avoid costly mistakes and make informed decisions. By hiring a consultant, startups can save time, money, and frustration, gaining a competitive edge in their market.

Startup HR Tips As a Founder you become a jack of all trades, tackling; sales, marketing, product, software, HR, operations, legal and finance. Balancing skills and knowledge across all areas can be difficult. Instead of spinning multiple plates, hire entrepreneurial people who can work across multiple areas and adapt to rapid change. Hiring experienced entrepreneurs can accelerate your business into the hands of customers.  _______________________________________________________________ For start up or scale up outsourcing DM Hydra-Software-Services  #startups #scaleups  #investors

Struggling with recruitment as a solo founder? You're not alone! Founders are unlikely to make many hires early on and try to preserve capital by doing recruitment in-house. 🏠 But, as Zabie Elmgren points out in Index Ventures' ‘Scaling Through the Chaos’, the burden of recruitment on a time-poor solo founder can become overwhelming on top of everything else. 🤯 Time to hire an agency? 💡 Focus on pitching your company effectively so that you can teach others how to sell it! 🔗 Let's optimise your recruitment strategy together. Get in touch to find out how: https://lnkd.in/eyM_DMJZ #startuplife #founderchallenges #recruitment #scalingup #solofounder #entrepreneurship #pitchperfect #hiring #startups #techrecruitment #techjobs #startupfounder #talentstrategy #HR

Who else thinks a consumer product founder should always have this as a priority? "...reshaping what the profile of a typical consumer founder looks like, as growing sustainably and profitably becomes a bigger focus." Hiring a fractional executive is a viable option startup founders should consider. “Knowing it’s challenging to be profitable in a competitive industry, we have to have a daily mentality of thinking around that concept,” Zhu said. For example, Modern Dose is sticking right now to outsourcing jobs ... instead of hiring a full in-house team. “Not having employees is not a terrible thing,” Zhu said. https://lnkd.in/eFjGqg8Y

Working in a high-growth startup means constantly battling against people debt—the accumulated burden of underinvesting in people operations as the business scales. Most startups, in the race to grow, choose to prioritise talent acquisition over investing in their People Ops teams. While this may seem like a smart move at first, I’ve seen firsthand how this choice actually slows down hiring in the long run. Why? The talent team ends up carrying the burden of People Ops work without having the necessary expertise to do it well. Over time, the hard work that goes into hiring the best people becomes wasted as these new hires don’t feel supported in their roles. Confusion spreads, productivity dips, and the very people you worked so hard to bring on board begin to disengage. Startups often make the mistake of thinking they can scale successfully without a strategic People team. This leads to the dangerous accumulation of people debt — where culture and collaboration begin to suffer because there’s no strong operational framework in place to support them. Without investing in people systems, teams start to wonder who's accountable, communication falters, and everything from project timelines to innovation grinds to a halt, you lose great people. Investing in People Ops is a necessity if you want to keep your business moving forward.

25 lessons that startup founders have to quietly, personally learn the hard way. (a lot of these I had to mess up before I knew them in my bones) (building a team) 1. Hiring needs to be a team-wide obsession. 2. Pick one founder to own early org design and hiring. 3. Hire in bursts, during which it’s this founder's sole focus. 4. From decision to hire, it's 5 months for that role to have impact. 5. Early on, you'll struggle to hire more than 1 person a month. 6. Don't set aggressive KPIs to be delivered by a team you haven't hired yet. 7. If you end up hiring quickly, increase targets - not the other way around. (fundraising) 8. Raising investment is not 'distracting' - it dominates every fibre of your being. 9. Experienced founders prepare their startup to function without them. 10. Take yourself off every critical path or your team will be rudderless. 11. You can't even think whilst waiting for a £million answer. (BigCo partnerships) 12. Partnerships with a BigCo when you are tiny are PR, a logo on your website. 13. Negotiations - with (salaried) biz devs and lawyers - are unhurried. 14. If it even launches, your hopes had already died in 1,000 meetings. 15. 99 times out of 100: just say ‘no’. (you being ok) 16. “I’ll work harder” is never the answer to “I have so much to do”. 17. Focus your tiny startup on 1-2 things at a time. 18. Listen to and trust your team. (runway/costs) 19. It is - objectively - an emergency if every month your business loses money. 20. This is the case whether you have 2+ or 24+ months of runway. 21. Every £ you spend you don’t get back. 22. Your bank account will hit £0 steadily - then incredibly fucking fast. 23. Spend to move numbers, not deliver activity. (targets) 24. Missing a target can be as much about the target as the execution. 25. If you never hit your targets, you have a bad strategy. What did I miss?