What is BOT – Model?

Startup Entrepreneurs need to focus on following aspects of successful product development to enter the market:

Engineering Team is executing to align with the Business Goals.
Engineering Deliverables are meeting expected quality.
Product Releases are made for the “go-to-market” strategy with the advantage of “early-mover”.
Keep the frugal burn rate.

To achieve above, Startup Entrepreneurs need to ensure:

Right Engineering Team and Skills for Product Architecture, Implementation, Quality, and Performance.
Piggyback on just right processes and compatible engineering model.
Literally 24 x 7 execution and support.
POCs are giving advantages to the Customer and eventually generate revenue.
Investment round(s) to scale for the growth.

Startup Entrepreneurs needs a partner, who not only help in product development but also act as true-partner to scale product, to support customer requirements and to accelerate Sales in the market for Company’s overall growth.

There are multiple ways to go for:

Outsourcing to so-called right Vendor.
Acquisition.
100% Subsidiary.
BOT – Build, Operate and Transfer.

Due to below factors, BOT Model looks winning over other ways:

Complete Transparency in Engineering Team and their day to day activities.
Direct Control on Hiring, Retention and hence for Firing also.
Ability to retain Intellectual Property (IP) Rights.
Considerable Cost savings as compared to the 3rd party partnership under Outsourcing and acquisition.
Not yet ready for 100% Subsidiary outside of home location.
Better and Safer to increase offshore investment in stages based on actual results.
T-Transfer part is not mandatory.

Build –

Set-up the Facility and Infrastructure.
Staff the development center with a high-quality team.
Establish knowledge transfer – Offsite and Onsite.

Operate –

Manage the offshore team.
Hiring and Growth.
Development.
QA.
Program Management.
Maintenance and enhancements.
Product support.

Transfer –

Hire an Engineering/Operations Head.
Register a new offshore subsidiary.
Transfer assets – Fixed assets and Team.
Handover operations.

Who should go for BOT Model?

Minimally Series-A funded Product Startup.
Established Enterprise Product Companies.

How BOT – Model is executed?

What Benefits do you get from BOT-Model?

BOT offers attractive business benefits over the traditional offshore subsidiary path, including:

Rapid scaling of operations.
Utilizing the Industry Network for attracting the right talent.
Lower infrastructure set-up costs.
Have a pool of trained resources to bring onsite as needed.
Dedicated Team with Knowledge retention.
- Allows relationship building between your Managers, Coaches and Leads with the team leads and members.
Reduce costs, by 40 to 50% or more as compared pure outsourcing model.
Reduced time to operations through utilization of knowledgeable 3rd party management resources responsible for:
- Real Estate
- Government rules and regulations
- Cultural transition
- IT infrastructure procurement
- Payroll and Accounting.
- Security – for IP related access to the code & NDA

Why Build-Operate-Transfer – BOT Model?

Reason #1: Single Man/Woman Army is not Scalable but the effective BOT-Model based team gives you required scalability.

Yeah, you heard it right and it is a hard-learned harsh reality. You are definitely super-CEO, but you need a partner for everything like Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Engineering. The BOT-Model provides you offshore engineering partner.

You need to build an effective team suited for your requirements:

Reason #2: Saves Time and Money

It is just not the fact of low-cost resources are available away from home location, but you are able to delegate the tasks to your effective partner and team so that:

Tasks are executed round the clock and in parallel. Essentially you can achieve more in less time.
Your own time is saved to do other required and important tasks.
It is YOUR team just working away from your home location.

Above is changed mindset and attitude toward the Product Startup Execution, but it is very crucial change to be done by sharing the trust, sense of ownership and accountability with your BOT Model Partner.

Reason #3: Backup gives you stress-relief

It sounds like more weird reason and why BOT Model releases your stress – especially you have also built the team near you i.e. home location team. Startup goes in different stages and each stage is different & requires you to take corrective steps. During such course of correction, your home location team may be compromised due to multiple valid situations like business does not go expected way & you need to take different route by reducing the team, competitors are pulling your own resources and financially you may not be in position to grow engineering more at your home location.

While facing all the above-mentioned situations after spending at least couple of years with your BOT Model Partner, you have the backup for engineering team away from your home location, which gives enough stress-relief to focus more on Sales & Marketing at the required location.