I’m looking to build out a line of products that will make the labor market for consulting jobs (and, eventually, full-time employment) more efficient. Fundamentally, I think that we as programmers get screwed by the extreme inefficiency of this market, and I’d like to test out some ideas on how to fix it.
Ultimately, if I succeed, it benefits everyone. If programmers can find better projects and jobs, then more valuable stuff is made, and their salaries can go up. Also, fixing the consulting market (which currently relies on inefficiency-injecting reputation/referral factors) makes it easier for programmers to bootstrap and to build their own companies without reliance on the venture capital oligarchy. In the long term, this means a world full of better products in addition to better programmers.
This requires getting a handle the programming consulting market. The good news is that I can service the whole spectrum of clients. The lower end ($50-150/hour) I can farm out overseas (I’ve been building up a database of offshore talent, and I plan on building a fair-trade outsourcing company with that) and the higher-end work (anything that I can’t find people able to do) I can take on myself. As I do so, I’ll be able to gather further information and find out which ideas work and (I hope) replace an inefficient market with a slightly smoother one.
Of course, right now, I have ideas but I haven’t tested them. I don’t have data yet. That’s to come.
So, where do you go when you’re looking for new clients?
Three years into the adventure of jumping ship from salaried servitude to hourly contracting, I have only found good clients in two ways.
First, when technical friends or ex-customers talk me up to another person in need, and they end up contacting me, not the other way around. I suppose you could call these reputation referrals. I love these, because someone coming to me with an interesting problem cuts through the annoying process of figuring out if my abilities are suited to their task.
Second, when I cold-email a company and say “your app / service sucks. here is why. I can fix it for these rates. your call.” This has worked better than I ever imagined. Larger companies are obviously less suitable, but when a 5-person startup gets an email from me about exactly how crashey their Android app is and how I, as a user, both want to fix it and see it fixed, if they respond at all, it is usually affirmative.
Honestly, the only truly difficult part of finding clients is that about 50% of leads try to hard sell me on joining as a full-time employee.
Thanks! This is very helpful.
First of all, I’ve got access to a lot of global talent, because one of my likely business partners knows a bunch of top-flight programmers in Asia. Instead of paying dirt-cheap rates like most labor-arbitrage outfits, I’m going to pay the people well above market (with sizable performance bonuses) and get the really choice talent… the people who’d be $400/h if they lived in San Francisco, but who live in countries where a fraction of that is a great wage. The selling point (to clients) is that the talent is way cheaper than the $400/h Frisco hipsters, but vetted, mentored, and overseen by elite American programmers from companies like Google. (I’m one of them; I’ll hold back other names until this thing actually exists.)
I don’t think that I could “go it alone” as a consultant. I’m great at selling other peoples' work. I struggle to sell my own because there’s a balance between impressing people with your intellect and making them like and trust you. I can do either one of the two very well, but both at the same time is hard, because my mind, at any given moment, tends to focus on one thing at the expense of the other. I’d rather defend the work of others, so that I don’t have ego on the line, then defend my own (…which I already know is very good and fuck you if you don’t see it.) I don’t I’d consult on my personal name for less than $3k per day. Just too much reputation risk and ego involvement.
That’s a great strategy.
For a consulting business (which is likely to be a part-time lifestyle business that doesn’t interfere with FT employment for me) this isn’t an issue. Obviously, if my theories are right and this thing takes off, then I might have to do it full-time and quit other jobs. That’s a Maserati problem, though.
That’s fascinating advice. Thank you for sharing it.