Costs & Fundraising
How do I decide between hiring employees vs contractors when runway is tight?
Answer:
Employees are suitable for long-term core ownership, but they cost more than just their salary, including taxes, benefits, and hiring time. Contractors and outstaffing allow you to scale up or down, start more quickly, and lower hiring risks - beneficial when the runway is limited. Many startups combine both: retaining product leadership in-house while increasing execution capacity with vetted remote engineers.
Related Costs & Fundraising Questions And Answers
- How can I estimate what my MVP will cost to build without being technical?
- How can we keep cloud and infrastructure costs under control as we grow?
- How can we prepare our engineering and product setup for investor due diligence?
- What’s a realistic monthly budget for a startup dev team building an MVP?
- Should I raise money before building the MVP or bootstrap first?
- What costs do founders usually forget when planning a fundraising runway?
- What metrics do investors expect from a SaaS startup before a seed round?
- How do I price my SaaS if we’re still early and don’t know the final scope?
- How do I calculate runway and burn rate in a simple way?
- What is staff augmentation cost vs hiring in-house, and how do I compare properly?
- How much equity should I give a technical co-founder vs hiring a CTO later?
- What should a startup prepare for technical due diligence in fundraising?
- How do I avoid over-hiring engineers after raising a seed round?
- What’s a sensible funding ask if we need to build and sell for the next 12–18 months?
- How do I show investors that our development cost is efficient and controlled?
- What’s the best way to negotiate developer rates with remote teams without hurting quality?
- How do we avoid building features that waste budget before product-market fit?
Ready to Hire?
Hire trusted devs from Ukraine & Europe in 48h
Skip the hiring headaches and get trusted developers who deliver results. Cortance has helped startups scale to million-dollar success stories.
Find a developer
We're Here to Help
Looking for consultation? Can't find the perfect match? Let's connect!
Drop me a line with your requirements, or let's lock in a call to find the right expert for your project.
