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When You Should Hire a Studio (and When You Shouldn't)

A frank look at when working with an outside studio actually pays off — and when hiring in-house or doing it yourself is the better call.

Not every project should be built by a studio. Not every project should be built in-house. Knowing which is which will save you months of pain.

Hire a studio when

  • The project is well-defined and time-bound
  • You need senior-level judgment for a short window
  • Your team has domain expertise but no bandwidth
  • You need cross-disciplinary craft (design + engineering + strategy) that would take three hires to assemble

Hire in-house when

  • The system will be central to your business for the next five-plus years
  • The scope is genuinely open-ended and evolving
  • The knowledge accumulates in a way that compounds internally
  • You have the recruiting and management capacity

Do it yourself when

  • The build is small and mostly a learning exercise
  • The requirements are still being discovered
  • The budget is very small and the timeline is very flexible

The tell

Not sure which category your project falls into? Ask us — we'll tell you honestly, even if the answer is "you don't need us."

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