When people think of automation and outsourcing, one word often comes to mind: cost. I will venture out to say that, for many, both automation and outsourcing are concepts that sound expensive. And I believe this is one of the biggest misconceptions of startups, scale-ups, and small companies out there. As someone with a deep tech-entrepreneurial background, I myself have dealt with the constraints of early-stage. Resources are scarce, there are few of you in the team, and lots (and I mean, LOTS) to do.
However, what many fail to see is that in multiple cases, automation and outsourcing aren’t luxuries: they are investments. It’s not about spending more, it’s about spending smarter. What smart startups need to see is that these two concepts can be a growth strategy that saves startups their most valuable resource: time.
Arthur Laffer was quite illustrative when he referred to this very same topic: “outsource everything but your core business.” Laffer is one of the most influential economists of our time, not only as an academic, but as a government advisor. Recognized as “The Father of Supply-Side Economics,” he has been featured in Time Magazine’s “The Century’s Greatest Minds” and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to economic theory and policy. The dilemma is clear: to do or not to do everything in-house. However, overextending a team and having them handle everything, from data processing to bookkeeping and internal reports, often leads to inefficiencies, inconsistent results, and burnout. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing — it looks like savings, but it quietly devours efficiency. While it seems cheap, it only drains strength and performance in the form of errors and lost productivity over time.
This is why outsourcing and automation aren’t luxuries, but investments. The real luxury that startups can’t afford is redundancy. During early-stage and scaling-up, startups can’t have redundant roles. Each person plays a key role in building that dream of a venture. And when you have key performers, you also have key performance. When your core team spends time cleaning data or fixing errors unrelated to your core business, that’s time not spent on growth, customer strategy, or innovation. In certain cases, outsourcing and automating tasks not relevant to the value proposition of your business (those dull, repetitive, logistical tasks) actually protects and amplifies the capabilities of essential talent. It’s about giving your team the space to do their best work: the creative, strategic, and human parts that no software replaces.
Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore, put it pretty neatly when he said: “If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.” Kuan Yew was the leader who transformed Singapore from a resource-poor British colony into the prosperous, highly developed global financial hub that it is today. A smart move for a startup is to focus on their value proposition and user experience while leaving the management of quality data to others.
As part of Veryfi’s data team, our work in data annotation and model training aims to make the automation tools within Veryfi’s core technology much more precise over time. This way, when data is collected through Veryfi, the result of machine learning-based data extraction is much more accurate, faster, and more consistent than manual data entry. And accuracy isn’t just a technical metric, it’s what makes decisions faster, reporting cleaner, and operations more reliable. Through this approach, Veryfi enhances the reach of team’s supervising information retrieval, rather than removing humans completely out of the equation.
Why should smart startups consider outsourcing and automation? Well, the main driver of a startup is trust. Your company will live or die depending on trust: whether it’s trust from customers, investors, or partners, it comes down to that. And through outsourcing and automation, startups can build a profile of data integrity and accuracy that supports professional credibility and customer confidence. This, in turn, reduces customer acquisition cost (CAC) because a trustworthy brand also grows through referrals and reputation. So, in the end, better data will support a better image, which in turn will create more trust and easier growth. At the end of the day, trust is currency, and reliable data is one of the best ways to earn it.
Thus, in reality, outsourcing and automation aren’t tools exclusively reserved for large companies. That’s just a myth to expose. Startups can benefit the same or even more from reliable outsourcing partners that can manage automation effectively. At Veryfi, our solutions are scalable, accessible, and designed to empower smaller teams to perform like larger ones. Just think about it: using Veryfi to manage receipts, invoices, and financial data can free up hours each week for strategy rather than spreadsheets. In terms of ROI, the benefit is clear: a small upfront investment in return for long-term operational freedom.
Conclusion:
In essence, automation isn’t only about speed, it’s about trust and growth. Growing a company isn’t about doing everything yourself, it’s about knowing what’s worth your focus and what’s better handled by technology. Small teams should evaluate whether they’re investing their time wisely or need to rethink where their efforts are going. Your time and talent deserve better than busywork—let automation take care of the repetitive stuff so you can focus on what really moves your company forward.
– Andrea Gomez
Author Bio: Andrea Gómez is a Data Annotations Engineer at Veryfi with a background in technology and entrepreneurship. She finds working with data and machine learning fascinating, and enjoys helping early-stage startups thrive.