I spent the first ten years of my career working as an engineer and product manager in Silicon Valley. One of the most important lessons I learnt was speed of execution.
Silicon Valley had the talent, the founders and the growth capital required to create and scale extraordinary tech startups. But it was an ecosystem that was focused on speed of execution above anything else.
And startups operating in the Valley made sure they had the best talent to build and ship software at pace - sourcing engineers from the Bay Area but, more commonly, from India. Low cost and high quality, they were the perfect solution to Silicon Valley’s hunger for speed.
In the UK, there has been some outsourcing to Eastern Europe, but offshore talent has never been the mainstream solution that it is in the US. Instead, typically UK tech startups hire in-house engineers or they use software consultancies based in the UK. The end products are often very good quality, but the process can be slow and expensive. Speed of execution is sacrificed for quality.
Two things have happened in the last couple of years which have changed the game for software development, and increased the speed of execution for UK startups dramatically.
Firstly - the pandemic changed British attitudes towards offshore talent. As everyone started working remotely, developers in other parts of the world became realistic options in a way that hadn’t happened in the UK before. Suddenly a high quality solution became commonplace that didn’t require lengthy recruitment processes.
This is good for British tech companies and good for tech hubs around the world. I moved to Silicon Valley from my home country of Pakistan and my company is now co-headquartered between London and Karachi. In the same way that I saw Indian talent fueling the rise of Silicon Valley’s most exciting companies, I hope Pakistan will become a key part of the success story of London tech companies.
And secondly, the arrival of AI has made software development more accessible and faster than it’s ever been.
AI software builders like Lovable and Bolt mean that non-technical founders can build their first website, apps and products without hiring a single software developer.
Beyond prototyping, we are not yet in a position where AI can build commercial standard software. But AI enables software developers either in-house or offshore to build faster and more efficiently than ever before.
In this era where speed of execution is king, quality matters. And startups need to make the right decisions about how to use AI software tools, when to build their own engineering teams and when to leverage offshore talent.
Getting the balance of these options right is an art that can make the difference between success and failure.
In-house engineering teams
Founders can use AI software builders to create prototypes and their first website, but for anything more complex they need to start building their own teams. In-house engineering teams are perfectly placed to build and refine a startup’s full tech stack and front and back end systems.
Many unicorns only use in-house teams to cover all of their software development and now, turbocharged with AI solutions, we will see that happening more and more with engineering teams getting smaller and more effective.
Outsourced and off-shore talent
Large, complex projects that require interoperability with multiple systems need external, professional help.
This is especially true for industries which manage large quantities of sensitive data, or handle anything that could fall under critical national infrastructure.
The limitations of AI and many engineers is that they are brilliant at delivery and shipping code. But they aren’t trained to think strategically, and use software projects to find commercial advantages.
This is when startups turn to software consultancies, and leverage the cost efficiencies of outsourcing and off-shoring their tech talent.
Yasin Altaf is the the founder of GoodCore Software.
