Got an Idea - Plan to hire offshore - elance

[kitjaii]

Hi fellow members, 

I'm new here, was doing some research online and came across this forum. It's a pleasure to meet you all. 

I wanted to get some advice, I have a general idea I want to build for android platform, I have discussed this idea to a few close friends of mine and they thought it was a great idea. 

Problem is, I have a limited budget and the place where does not have the right team and the right budget that fits my requirement. I am planning to hire offshore, and have gone through a few profiles on e-lance. 

Want to ask what are your experiences and regular procedure for hiring offshore? What are the chances of my idea being stolen and developed, and will NDA really protect my idea since we are on opposite sides of the country. 

Thanks

[Tomt]

Its a sad fact of life but an NDA would only help you if you had the money to hire the lawyers to back it up. Matters are made worse with it being in another country, and they would likely be subject to their laws and court rules, not yours. Not to discourage you, but it is something to be aware of.

 

Your best recourse of bad behavior is a bad review. Reputation in places like that is king. Choose somebody with reputation to loose and you take on less risk. 

[sbat]

> What are the chances of my idea being stolen and developed, 

 

I find it very unlikely that someone would like to steal undeveloped and unproven idea from the customer.

 

Good ideas (concepts) are not rare and easy to generate. Paying customer is much harder to come buy. One can take customer's money AND develop some other ideas (which are not rare and easy to generate). Or steal some proven idea (clone the game or app, or clone game from the old platform).

 

Think about it this way. If Flappy Bird author paid you fairly for the development of this game a year ago, would you be inclined to steal it and publish it on your own? Would you be able to predict its success? 

[away168]

Assume your works/ideas are not protected at all if you're hiring freelancers abroad. That's why some companies only work with companies because they can be sued if something happens between the contract/agreement due to their legal presence.

 

By that circumstance, you should able to find the way to give the right tasks where it doesn't lead them to steal your work, even if they know about it. It can be done in many ways. For example, your project is so big/complex that if they stole it, only big gaming companies can execute it before you do. The other example, if you're hiring 2D artist, you give them a list of items but you do not tell them of how these assets would connect to each other. Another example, if you're hiring programmer, give them the tasks that you know what to do and ask him to do just that part, as if you're doing parallel work yourself.

 

In my experience, I never find this stealing issue as a better risk than if they leave you in the middle of the project.

[Anastasia Stefanuk]

Offshore and nearshore team nowadays is one of the most popular options. There are a lot of companies which provide such services - this way you shouldn't worry about NDA, etc because they will guarantee you that your data will be in save. Here you can read more about nearshore outsourcing. The one really important thing - you must choose a reliable provider - feel free to ask about client's quotes, portfolio, etc