Build In-House or Outsource MVP

We're a small fintech startup trying to decide between building in-house versus outsourcing development for our initial product. We've got one senior developer on staff and budget to hire more, but I'm wondering if bringing on a specialized development partner for the first version might get us to market faster. The product is a business expense management platform with integrated payment cards and automated reconciliation. Has anyone gone the outsource route for their MVP and then transitioned to internal development later? Did it work out or do you wish you'd built everything in-house from the start?

There's no universal right answer here but I'd say if you've only got one senior dev right now, trying to build a payment platform in-house is going to take forever and you'll hit obstacles you didn't anticipate. Payment systems have a lot of hidden complexity around edge cases, security requirements, and regulatory compliance. Your solo dev might be brilliant but there's a ton of domain-specific knowledge that comes from having built these systems before. The risk with outsourcing is ending up with code you don't understand or can't maintain, but that's mainly a problem if you go with the wrong partner. Look for a team that's willing to document thoroughly, do knowledge transfer sessions, and write code that your eventual internal team can work with. Make sure you own all the code and IP from day one. And start planning your transition strategy early - how will you eventually bring maintenance and new features in-house? That transition period is where things often get messy if you haven't thought it through.

I actually did exactly this - outsourced our MVP development and then gradually moved to an internal team over about 18 months. It was absolutely the right call for us. We got to market in 6 months instead of probably 18+ months if we'd tried to hire and build everything internally first. The key was finding a development partner who understood they were building a foundation we'd eventually own completely, not creating a dependency on them forever. They built everything modular, wrote extensive documentation, and even helped train our first internal hires when we started bringing people on. The team we used specializes in fintech products so they knew all the compliance stuff and security best practices we would have had to learn the hard way. That's https://codevision.tech - they've worked with quite a few startups on this model. My advice is don't think of it as purely outsourcing, think of it as bringing on a temporary extended team to get your first version shipping while you build your permanent team in parallel. Just make sure your contracts are clear about code ownership and knowledge transfer expectations.