14 Multi-Million Companies Who Were Built Leveraging Outsourced And Remote Developers

When Outsourcing Became A Huge Part For These Famous Companies’ Successes

Outsourcing has been known to help a lot of businesses, big ones and startups. They’ve been part of every company’s huge successes, even crucial to it. But did you know that several famous multi-million companies have started out outsourcing? It’s even one of the major factors of their success!

1. Alibaba

Everyone knows that Alibaba is now the world’s biggest online marketplace but only a few know that it started out outsourcing web developers and several other experts to built the company. The company originally turned to U.S experts since China wasn’t able to provide the talents Alibaba needed. Now, Alibaba’s outsourced partners are mostly located in China .

2. Slack

Who wouldn’t have thought; a tool used mostly by outsourced remote workers was of course built by outsourced developers. Before Slack was launched in 2013, founders Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson, and Serguei Mourachov outsourced a design and development firm to build and design Slack’s app, website graphics and logo. Today it already has over 5 million daily users, thanks to outsourcing.

3. Whatsapp

Just when you thought the list couldn’t get any better, you’ll find out that the very app almost everyone is using was also developed by an outsourced developer. Before Facebook bought Whatsapp for $19.3+billion in 2013, former Yahoo! Employees, Brian Acton and Jan Koum founded the company. Before launched in 2009, Brian and Jan outsourced a developer in Russia, Igor Solomennikov. He was also a contractor developer in Iphone and later on joined Whatsapp company and became CIO.

4. Skype

Ah, the ever famous, Skype. A tool that is widely used by individuals and businesses was of course built by outsourced developers during the early 2000’s. Founders Niklas Zennström and the Dane Janus Friis outsourced the app’s back-end development to Jaan Tallinn, Ahti Heinla, and Priit Kasesalu. The three developers later on became partners and thanks to them, huge companies have utilized their app. Microsoft later on bought Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011.

5. Google

Yes, you read that right, Google. One of the world’s leading technology and innovation companies have been trusting their IT, administrative, development and customer service work to outsourced firms. Despite having great employer reputation for their in-house staff, they weren’t an exception to taking advantage of outsourcing workforce.

You can notice that these companies started out outsourcing workforce in its early years and are still currently trusting their success to their outsourced partners. Other famous companies such as AppSummo, BaseCamp, Expensify, GiftHub, Groove, Klout, MySQL, and Opera have also been taking advantage of outsourcing. You can also be successful! Who knows? One day your company will be found on lists like these.