When to hire your tech team in Singapore

Photo credit: Tirza van Dijk

I get asked about this topic a lot by early stage startups, since I run a sizeable tech team locally and have no issues (or so they think) with hiring, training, retaining talent, etc. While there isn’t a 5-step recipe to building your tech team, what I hope to achieve with this post is to present you indicators for when you should be hiring your team.

To preface this, I will be addressing startups that are building a business enabled by technology, as opposed to startups whose core focus is on building some sort of technological intellectual property. While some of the broad team advice I can give may apply to any technology startup, my observations around specific needs and timing don’t.

Pros and cons of building your tech team in Singapore

So you’ve decided this island to be your place of business. Perhaps, it was the grants, or the people, or both (hopefully it was both). In any case, you’re here to stay so the next question you need to ask yourself is if this is the right place to build your team.

Singapore is too small a country to support the developer ecosystems we see elsewhere.

Broadly speaking, Singapore has greater access to foreign talent; people from around the world have many reasons to work in Singapore. It’s a safe city to live in, working and living here is convenient, work is fast-paced with many opportunities for advancement, etc.

This is vital because Singapore does have a dearth of locals that are willing to pick up the mantle of software development. The general populace see tech jobs in the same light as blue collar jobs, as opposed to more respected fields like finance, medicine, law, etc.

While this archaic view is rapidly changing for the better, we are only seeing the early hints of things to come. Singapore is too small a country to support the developer ecosystems we see elsewhere. As a developer, it’s hard to find good places to work at, where you get to hone your craft on best practices and challenging projects.

I’m optimistic that we’ll get there some day, but that day is not today.

In addition to actually finding talent, you’ll also find that salaries here are higher than what you would pay for developers in the surrounding region. As a startup, you’ll be very much inclined to pay more than market rate for developers. My opinion is that this is only justified if the developer is indeed better than market average, but otherwise is just foolish. I’m all for higher developer salaries, but the ecosystem doesn’t support it very well yet, but that’s where you come in eh?

The Idea-Stage Startup

If you’re an idea stage startup and you’re looking for a CTO, prepare to wait a lot, if not forever. Simply put, the odds are not stacked in your favor. Unless you made friends with the geeks in school (such foresight you), the chances of you snagging CTO that will sweat it out for equity is slim to none.

Even if you do find one, why would they join your idea-stage startup, as opposed to a startup that is further along the way? Chances are, you’ll be dangling equity plus cash to get them to join, but have no way to assess if you need this person beyond the initial product launch. You can’t design a better trap than this really. Can this person scale up the solution, make tough calls on product and technology, hire and lead a team around the business? I hope you have this person on a vesting schedule.

You don’t need a CTO to build an idea.

At this stage, you have very little bargaining power in the job market, so you’ll soon be settling for leftovers. Don’t be that guy. Instead, save some time and dignity and hustle your way through this by hiring freelancers on oDesk or Elance, or a developer that’s moonlighting for quick cash.

The Post-Launch Startup

The Product-Market Fit Startup

Final thoughts