In this instructional video, SaaS investment director Akeel Jabbar explains why early‑stage SaaS founders—especially those without a technical background—should consider outsourcing the development of their minimum viable product (MVP). He outlines three primary advantages: (1) outsourcing saves time and money by providing a ready‑made, cross‑functional team that can deliver an MVP quickly while the founder focuses on customer acquisition and fundraising; (2) specialized SaaS development agencies bring deep experience, efficient processes, and end‑to‑end capabilities (UX/UI, backend, frontend, testing, validation) that reduce the risk of low‑quality code and accelerate product‑led growth; and (3) international outsourcing offers affordable, high‑quality talent, particularly from Eastern Europe, allowing founders to cut developer costs by up to 50% compared with U.S. rates. Jabbar also warns about the pitfalls of trying to build in‑house without technical expertise, such as blowing through $100k without a viable product. He concludes with a call to action for viewers to share their MVP experiences. The video serves as a concise, persuasive guide for SaaS founders evaluating development strategies.
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You've got this big vision, you've got this big market, you've got this big idea. You are ready to take on that challenge and become a SaaS founder of your next business. Now the question is, how do I get started? Where do I find the right team to be able to build that product? And that's exactly why I'm creating this video specifically for you. Hey guys, welcome back to the SaaS District, the number one YouTube channel that teaches you all about SaaS. My name is Akeel Jabbar. I am the investment director and GP at Horizon Capital, where we work specifically with SaaS founders to help them build and grow their SaaS business. Now, as you guys know, SaaS is probably one of the hottest markets and businesses out there when it comes to IT. And the cloud market. Now it's growing faster than ever, but you know, starting a SaaS is not that easy. If you understand anything about SaaS, then you understand the amount of time and resources it takes, especially at the beginning, to develop your product. And that's where a lot of your budget is going to go when you're first getting started, is going into development and building your product and your MVP, which is your minimum viable product, so you can go out and sell and market it to clients. What I understand is that not every company where every founder has the resources, the means, or the time and investment to be able to hire teammates to manage them and go out and build the product. You can understand you can make a lot of mistakes, especially if it's your first time building a SaaS. That's why something I recommend is actually outsourcing your initial SaaS development. So especially if you're not a technical founder and you don't understand how to manage developers, if you don't understand code, if you don't understand quality, different tech stacks and what to look for and what not to look for, it can be very, very risky for you and for investors when it comes to them putting their capital to be able to, you know, try and build it yourself and manage a team in-house when you don't know what you're doing. It's very, very easy to blow through $100,000, which I've seen many, many times without even building a good quality product. So in this video, what I'm going to talk about is 3 reasons why you should consider outsourcing your development. So number 1, outsourcing saves you time and money. So as you know, as a SaaS venture, you're at the initial stages, you are very limited when it comes to capital, the amount of money you have, and how much you're able to invest into building your product. And like I said, your very first challenge is building your MVP so that you can go out and actually show your users that you have something. And that can be just one single feature. Even though you have this big vision that you want to create this big product, start off with building a small feature here that shows how good and powerful your product is going to be and how it's going to solve their problem. And then you can go and, you know, build out additional features and products that they ask for. Obviously, building that MVP can become a challenge. And by working with an outsourced SaaS outsourcing development agency, you have access to an entire team, a cross-functional team who knows what they're doing, who've already built this before, and they're going to be able to build your MVP as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible. So, you know, you come to them, you say, hey, look, I've got this vision. This is exactly what I have in mind. This is the market I want to tackle. And they're going to be able to kind of manage that. They're going to have a project manager who's going to come in, you know, assign it to the right people who are going to focus on the right task on exactly what needs to be done to be able to build that MVP with very little involvement from your side. You're going to come in, make sure things are on time. You're going to make sure that it's, you know, giving feedback on the exact product of what you had and, you know, vision in your mind of how you want it to be built. But then, you know, while they're focusing on that, you can focus on the other sides of the business operations, you know, getting those initial customers, talking to them, getting on the phone with them, getting feedback, and then be able to, you know, raise money, additional capital if needed. So that's the number one reason, guys— saving money and saving time by hiring an outsourcing development team. Number 2, you get to leverage the experience and efficiency of a specialized development team. So what do I mean by that? When you work with a development, you know, agency or firm who works specifically with SaaS, you instantly have access to to a wide network of partners and a wide network of, you know, software engineers. You also have access to your UX/UI designers, backend, frontend app engineers. You have access to an entire team at a fraction of the cost at the tip of your fingers. So that's how beautiful it is because you have, you know, cross-functional access to build your product. So that efficiency, you know, that diversity gives, you know, building, testing, prototyping, design, all of the above so that you don't have to go and hire 10 people in-house, and they're going to be able to do that with their existing team that they already have. So by leveraging the right team, they're going to be able to not only implement, they're going to be able to test it, they're going to be able to validate it, they're going to be able to make sure it's robust, make sure it's well-designed, properly set up, and make sure it's fit to exactly to your demands and your needs of what you wanted to build. So what that's going to give you is going to help you avoid working with teams that are unstable, poor quality code, software with a lot of bugs, and also boost productivity and lead your product-led strategy, right? So that's kind of the focus here. You're building a product and you want a product-led marketing strategy here. So your focus is building a good quality code product and service, which is what they're going to help you with. And obviously when you have the right team, they become kind of as your partners. They'll be able to give, you know, help you solve the problems you're facing maybe in other areas of your business. They give you that support, they give you that guidance, and that'll save you a lot of headaches. And obviously you get to leverage all their years of experience. They've done this many, many times. You don't have to give them equity. You don't have to bring them on as full-time co-founders, but they have all that experience. You know, they might— they may have done this, you know, with hundreds of different companies before, so they know what works and what doesn't work, and they'll be able to share the same thing with you guys. Number 3, outsourcing provides affordable talent. So as you guys know, with hiring development teams, the rates can be quite expensive, right? When it comes, especially if you're in the local market, let's say you're in the USA, the cost of hiring one developer, even if you're outsourcing or it's on a freelance basis, you're paying anywhere between $150 to upwards of $300 an hour, right? And if you want to hire them full-time, especially if you're going somewhere like San Francisco, you're easily paying $150K, $250K a year just to be able to keep and retain a high-quality engineer. By outsourcing, you also get access to many, many different time zones. I recommend going, you know, working with an international team, right? Because you're gonna get a lot cheaper rates and for, you know, equal or better quality, and they get to work with you on the time zone that you like. So one area that I really like to hire from— some people, you know, may work with India. I personally like working with Eastern Europe because I find their quality to be really, really good. You know, they speak fluent English, they're— they've done this many, many times. Places like Poland, Ukraine, or Russia, where you'll be able to hire a team for, you know, let's say where I said it's about $250 an hour, here you're looking from anywhere from $50 to $100 or $150 an hour for a senior engineer, right? So your cost, you're saving almost 50% just by outsourcing to an international team, as long as they have the experience and they know what they're doing and they can show that they've done it several times and they have case studies to back it up. So that's the main thing you want to look for, is do they specialize in SaaS Have they done it before and can they show you a wide variety of businesses that they worked with and maybe some that are similar to the product that you're tackling and how they've done it? So there you have it, guys. Those are the 3 reasons why you want to outsource your SaaS project to a development agency. All right. If you guys enjoyed this video, make sure to like, subscribe, and smash that bell button and comment below. Let me know, how did you build your MVP? Did you do it in-house or did you outsource it to a development agency? What was your experience on both of those? Okay. I'd love to hear from you. And I'll see you guys on the next video.
