[cperciva]

The merits of out-sourcing are debatable in general, but where startups are concerned out-sourcing coding is just plain crazy. Startups, more than any other sort of company, need to be fast, need to do things well, and need to have very efficient internal communication; the likelyhood of any of these happening decreases the further away the founders are from the people who are doing the coding.

If all the coding is being done by founders, things have a decent chance of working; if all the coding is being done by people hired by the founders, the odds are pretty slight; but if all of the coding is being done by people hired by a company hired by the founders -- i.e., by people two steps away -- there's almost no chance whatsoever that the coders will have either (a) sufficient motivation, or (b) understand the founders' vision. (Of course, the same thing works in the opposite direction -- if the founders are two steps away from the people writing the code, there's almost no chance that the founders are going to understand what's going on.)

And that's not even getting into the difficulties of working with people who have a different culture, a different language, and are working in a different timezone.

Out-sourcing development might save you money; but it's distinctly not going to get a startup up and running faster.