Improving Start-Up Success by Hiring Freelancers

Allocating the right amount of effort behind each of these issues torments every start-up founder until demand ‘automates’ itself as such and delivers a level that is more than comfortable without the required sweat and squeezing that comes with something that is absolutely brand new. To have that happen, good people are needed in the appropriate numbers.

Start-ups are inevitably led by people who believe that, while the world appears to produce more and more specialists, they (the start-up founders) are people who are Masters of All. They see themselves as great innovators, marketers, finance managers, tech heads, people managers, and on and on, all at the same time, all rolled up into one. The one thing all start-up founders will acknowledge, however, is that what needs to be done for their business cannot be done without help.

The challenge though, is that there are almost no other people out there who are innovators, marketers, finance managers, tech heads, people managers, all at the same time, all rolled up into one. Actually, there are, but they are themselves founders of other start-ups, so what can one do?

“… what needs to be done for their business cannot be done without help.”

The simple solution is to hire innovators, and hire marketers, and finance managers, and tech heads, and people managers, and so on. To do that, though, is massively costly because of the resulting, cumulative salary bill. There would be good quality output from the team but it would give rise to an urgent Cost-Benefit discussion that very likely would result in a vote in favour of lower costs and accepting the lesser benefits.

What should be done instead is to manage a fractional workforce and that is where those innovators, marketers, finance managers, tech heads and people managers would all be hired but each would be employed on a much-reduced time and employment commitment base. The key is that each person is given a specific task, or set of tasks, to complete for the organization and that is what they are compensated for. They are engaged for a single, specific task and they are paid to undertake that single, specific task. When they get the task, or tasks, completed, their service is effectively terminated. They leave the organization and their compensation is paid. They are thus, an expense as such and not a fixed overhead.

“Manage a fractional workforce that all individuals would be employed on a much-reduced time and employment commitment base.”

What’s the value for a start-up? It’s exactly the same as the value for any company: the work that needs to be done is done, but once it is done, there is no need to continue carrying the individual as an overhead. There might be new work that needs to get done. Great. But that also has a finite time span, and once that is then, the person can be released from service yet again.

Fundamentally, staff delivery and output can now be managed on an as-needed basis, which means those days, or those weeks even that the person is not needed, they are not around. Immediately, there are costs saved as a result. And for any start-up, or any company, that is a winning reason to hire people on a gig basis!