[darkmarmot]

I used to do this kind of work as a contractor (for logistics and manufacturing), and I've it seen go both perfectly well and tragically wrong. The most common points of failure I've seen are underestimating the amount of business/domain knowledge needed and picking the wrong team.

Sometimes it's worth bringing someone in to build a temporary prototype to test the waters (I once wrote a wireless hand scanner pick system for a startup warehouse in a weekend -- they planned to throw my code away but just needed something functional right then.)

I would only pursue it if:

- your business is truly niche/unique and there's a significant cost due to process friction

- the total amount of work needed to have a functional product could be completed by one or two good developers in a matter of weeks/months.

If you do pursue it, I would try to take advantage of the Python Paradox (https://paulgraham.com/pypar.html) and hire someone, counterintuitively, working in a niche technology. You could probably find someone pretty good willing to build it in Elixir without much trouble.

[Aeolun]

> You could probably find someone pretty good willing to build it in Elixir without much trouble.

While I agree with that assessment, you’ll also spend the rest of your days cursing yourself if they were to leave.

[darkmarmot]

It's not hard to learn and my current Fortune 100 has had zero trouble hiring for it.