Sorry I missed this thread, I think it was meant for me.
I currently work for a small logistics company as a senior engineer. I am pretty happy and not looking for work (like many of the comments here), but I am happy to converse or schedule a call sometime if you're interested to discuss. [email protected].
Other commenters had I think the correct answer - you just need ONE REALLY GOOD IT co-founder or vice president to help coordinate that, who can both leverage outsourced solutions but also build things on their own, and most importantly who truly understands and cares about the logistics and cost savings.
I see a lot of dysfunctional and large tech teams building out over-complicated solutions with zero industry awareness, instead of lean solutions.
Did you see this article [1] here from a couple months ago about Temu's semi-managed delivery model? I was pleasantly surprised to see logistics on YC. We don't talk about it enough but it's the backbone of global economy.
Best of luck! Let us know what you decide to do and shoot me an email if you want to connect.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40497472 - Temu's semi-managed model could change everything
Would be interested to know the industry and any specific requirements that are very unique!
That’s taking the second step before the first. If this is going to work at all, first try to build a solution that works for you. Once you have that, then there may be a chance that others will find it useful as well, but it is a whole lot of additional work to turn an in-house solution into a proper product, and your in-house needs are unlikely to translate 1:1 to other companies, and vice versa.
An internal user that can wander over to Bob and say hey, this thing isn’t working quite right, I’ll grab a coffee with you and we can talk through it, is very different from a paying corporate who will not tolerate service falling below a certain standard. I joined a company where they were trying to transition an internal piece of condition monitoring software to be a SaaS app and it went really badly wrong, the sales people seemed to assume it was ready for this but it just wasn’t and needed a huge amount of hardening and security work, not to mention features to make it easier to use.
There was no market for it, it was too expensive, too unwieldy and too nonstandard.
AWS could do 90% of what the custom cloud product could and the last 10% was regulatory stuff, not technical.
Another option is to consider building in the open. If the technology is not a differentiator in your industry, then maybe you build it open source under GPL. That way you can build a consortium of similar firms to build a genuine alternative to the status quo while preventing lockout.
You don’t have to decide about proprietary vs open source release now… but you should consider taking steps to preserve those options down the line.
Most engineers don't love joining a giant co. and using tech we are not fond of.
A startup mindset is importantly for the first hires, but selling software is an aspiration not a requirement.
That aspiration can be distracting from simpler business problem solving solutions too, so be clear “new codebase” when we are ready to sell…
Shortcuts for us, no shortcuts on the software resell company.
> Our business operates in a specific niche and there are no other providers who cater specifically to our industry.
If you decide to do in-house, I’d recommend thinking about competing against existing as a new revenue stream, and spinning it off as a separate business unit as much as possible. I imagine this is implied in your question but it wasn’t specifically mentioned.
> Besides, can we even attract experienced developers to a non-glamorous industry like logistics?
Yes. Are you kidding? Non-glamorous reads as safe in uncertain times. It’s a positive point that will be a marketing multiplier for attracting talent, if coupled with other indications that your business has clear goals and good ideas.