When we started Pollenizer in 2008, we also started an Indian business to provide the software engineering services we needed to economically and rapidly launch our web businesses. Over the next three years we visited India every couple of months and grew a team around our our good friend Jagadeesh VM (“Jugs”) to 60 people.
It was a huge process. Working on a startup is tough in the most ideal contexts, but a geographically displaced team from another culture made this harder. We knew we could not do this casually and we needed to make an investment. We worked closely with the Jugs to:
- grow the right kind of engineers (attitude, experience, career path) around a senior team who knew our platform and companies well
- implement scrum for rapid iteration and speed of learning
- implement a training program (Pollenizer University) to train new recruits before placement on a business
- commit to a single development platform (PHP/Zend) and a core framework of tools for rapid development of Pollenizer projects
- implement processes for dealing with language barriers and requiring clear, proactive communication via Jira and Skype.
The transformation over the three years was substantial and inspiring.
In mid-2011, we re-configured the Pollenizer model around the idea of “pods”. Pods are small, cross-disciplinary startup teams that sit together in our Sydney office. They use our methodology to conceive, launch and validate new web businesses in tight 4 month cycles. The Sydney team started to move faster and the overhead of international communication and late nights for the team became unsustainable.
With regret for the guys in India, we decided to move our entire operation to Sydney. Now all of our platform engineers sit inside the pod.
The economics of web businesses mean that we need to be pragmatic. We need to find some way of getting it done. 4 engineers in India can cost less than a single engineer in Sydney and this is helpful for an entrepreneur with limited resources. It is the difference between doing it or not doing it.
Pollenizer India has become X-Minds. If you need a way to get things done offshore with a group of engineers you can trust, I’d drop Jugs a line (jugs AT x-minds.org) and have a chat.
It won’t be a perfect experience. You will be frustrated with the timezone difference and struggle to communicate sometimes. But it might be the difference between doing it or not doing it and I always opt for the former.