Sometimes the hardest part of opening a satellite office is not the hiring. It is the meeting where you explain it. Investors and boards tend to ask the same five questions, so the work is preparing clear answers to those.
Frame it as opening an office, not cutting a cost
How you name the decision shapes how it is heard. “We’re moving work abroad to cut costs” invites every worry a board has ever had. “We’re opening an India office to hit the next milestone with the capital we raised” invites a conversation about milestones.
Both can describe the same plan. Only one of them is about the company you are building.
The five questions, and what to bring
1. What does it cost, all in? Bring the cost per seat, not the salary. In a satellite office, the monthly price for a seat covers:
- salary, benefits and payroll
- compliance
- the office, IT and equipment
For example:
| Seat | Mid level, per month |
|---|---|
| Full-stack developer | $2,800 to $4,200 |
| QA engineer | $2,200 to $3,200 |
Put the same seats, costed the same way at home, next to them. See the same hire in the Netherlands and in India for how to build that comparison line by line.
2. What does it change in the plan? Show the milestone, not the saving. “With the same capital, we can staff the roadmap through the next release” is the sentence a board remembers.
3. How fast can it start? About 3 weeks from a signed engagement to someone working. Compare that honestly with how long your last local hire took.
4. What is the risk, and how do we get out? The terms are:
- $0 until you hire
- no lock-in
- 30 days notice to scale down
- the SoTalented Office Guarantee: if the fit is wrong, we replace the person within 30 days
The downside is bounded and visible, which is the answer a board wants.
5. Who runs it? You manage the work: priorities, reviews of output, the roadmap. We run employment, payroll, compliance, the office and HR, across 42 touchpoints. Nobody on your team becomes an HR department in another country.
Say which roles stay home
Boards trust a plan that has edges. Say plainly which roles stay local and why:
- leadership
- customer-facing roles that need your language or your room
- anything that needs physical presence
It shows the decision was made role by role. See the roles we’d tell you to keep local.
One page is enough
The whole case fits on one page:
- the milestone
- the seats, with all-in costs beside the home-market equivalent
- the start date
- the terms
- who runs what
- the roles that stay local
If it takes more than a page, the plan is not finished yet.
See the scenario in make the round go further, the startup view on /startups, or talk to us and we will help you build the one-pager.