Starting development company, how to start?

We are a team of 3 people who are developers. We would like to offer services like

• website / webapp development
• mobile app development
• desktop app development

We are only coders, we dont have graphics designer, we dont have SEO/UX specialist and so.
How should we cover these things in start? Hire? Outsource? What are our options?

How to explain this to our customers? When we outsource, prices can go high for our customers.

Should we invest in ads or do it other way?

We plan to offer services at the beginning. Later we plan to create some online SaaS that we have in mind.

Hire? Outsource? What are our options?

Hire and outsource. This is sort of simple beginner logic, or? Either the guy doing it is hired from you (employee) or works as separate legal entity (outsource, including freelancers). There is no third way because at the end someone has to do the work.

How to explain this to our customers?

Talk to them.

When we outsource, prices can go high for our customers.

Only if you are greedy bastards. See, there is a market rate for that. THe freelancer will give you some percent and you can mark up some percent and end up with maybe 20% or 25% of the invoice amount in your pockets.

If that is not good enough for you for just forwarding work (note: project management etc. should be separately paid) then you are greedy and yes, i you mark up a lot - you will be too expensive. And no, no sensible freelancer will give you significantly below market rate, why should he?

Should we invest in ads or do it other way?

I really hate to tell you, but you should know. Starting a company is not "i know something", it is totally about doing the paperwork, identifying your markets and having a faint idea how to get people to pay for your services. You sound like a taxi driver who has does not have a driving license. When you consider starting a company, you should have an idea already how to market your services.

Your setup is WEAK. All what you name (exception desktop to a large degree) is heavy graphical, and you have no graphics person. You also have no project management skills. For a pure service company that puts you into the bucket of a body shop, sorry.

I would suggest going passive. I have run a small IT consulting company - nothing big, jut 6 people, and we did not do advertising ever since foundation. There are plenty of companies looking for people for projects.

Ahmed, you say:

We are a team of 3 people who are developers.

and your need is to sell your services. In a small company or startup you basically have two choices, either hire someone to do what you want done or do it yourself. You can think of sales and marketing as just one more thing that needs doing, like the accounting, making coffee and tea, or finding office space.

Like anything else, some people will be better at it than others, and the better people generally get paid more for what they do. It is also true that most people improve with practice. If one of you is so inclined, there is no reason why they should not try to sell your services. Sales, like programming, can be learned. Your first sale, like your first program, will probably not be perfect, but you will learn from it.

Another option is to find a salesman who needs some programming and barter services with him. He finds you clients and perhaps you help him with a CRM (client relationship management) system. That way you both win and it does not require cash from either of you.

Finally you can simply offer to pay a commission to a salesperson who brings you business.

Even if you have a salesperson, all of you should be thinking and working on how to build your business. Unless and until you have too much programming work, you can all be doing things to make the world aware of what you can do. For example you can build a website, blog, contribute to open source projects, make personal calls on companies that might need your services etc. Each of you should do what you can.

What definitely does not work is simply sitting in the office waiting for people to come to you.