What to Outsource
I’ve gotten in some conversations recently about whether you should outsource PR early in a company’s life. My take is no. We’ve kept PR in-house except for a bit of outside counsel from friends. (After all, what’s the point of having brilliant friends if you’re not going to ask them for advice?) I’m not really sure how to do it any other way, as the company and product are constantly shifting and the thought of having to keep someone else on top of that and expect them to be able to pitch it seems crazy. Anyway, seems as though Chris Dixon agrees:
A fundamental principle of business is that you do things in house that you think can give you a competitive advantage and outsource things that you don’t. At an early-stage technology company this means you do in house: product design, software and/or hardware development, PR, recruiting, and customer relations/community management. Ideally, most of these activities are led by founders. You should outsource legal, accounting, website hosting, website analytics etc. (Unless you are starting a company where one of those activities can give you a competitive advantage, e.g. a securities trading startup would need to have in-house legal).