If you’ve got an idea for a piece of software that simply has to be built, you may find yourself unsure of where to start or which routes to go down. To help make things a little clearer, here are some ways you can form up in teams and realise your vision.

 

1) Form a remote team

Forming a remote team is how a lot of magic happens in the big, wide world of the web. There are many ways to tackle it and many tools to help you on your way.

 

Freelancers

If you’ve got some cash to spend, heading to freelancing sites like Freelancer, Upwork and PeoplePerHour can help you find people to develop your piece of software. Bear in mind though, that sometimes the higher-level talent can be drowned out in a swamp of low-quality applications.

 

Interested in forming a remote team for free in exchange for an equitable share of the profits? Check out Crowdsourcer.io! 

 

Open Source

If you want help building a free piece of software why not go open source? If your idea is good enough it’ll quickly get picked up on and with a little posting around you’ll be able to get contributors into your project to help build it out for free. Of course, the catch here is that it’s often quite tricky to monetise open source projects, but it can be done.

 

Revenue Sharing

If you want to monetise the product but don’t have the money to spend on freelancers, it may be worth looking into crowdsourcing or going to communities within which you’re well known and forming up in teams of like-minded people. It’s very common to adopt a revenue sharing (or rev-share) model in these cases, whereby you share the profits equally (or on a time/contribution basis) with the people who helped out.

 

2) Form a co-located team

If you’ve got the capital to invest in an office space and the contacts and resources to call upon, forming a co-located team (i.e. in an office) is one of the best ways to kick-start development. Though the hiring process can be a bit of a pain and the office space can be a bit pricey, the high level of personal contact you’ll have with your colleagues can help improve the chances of properly realising your idea. If you need extra cash to do this, why not check out our blog post on what type of investment is best for your business.

 

3) Go it alone

Sometimes, if the scope of your project is small, you can just go it alone and realise your vision in its entirety, entirely by yourself. It can be hard to generate excitement and you may only be able to dedicate your evenings and weekends, but many of the tools available to fully fledged teams can help you on your way. Remember though, it’ll become a full-time job when it comes to marketing as it can be very tricky to get seen and heard. This goes a lot for developing apps on App Store, it’s a really tough marketplace to break into, and even harder to do so alone.

 

I hope this has been an interesting read for those of you airing on the decision of going it alone or forming a team. If you’ve got any experiences you want to share, drop a comment below.