Ask HN: left the consulting company I started, what now? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: left the consulting company I started, what now?

#11

Post by koevet » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 12:44 PM UTC

thibaut_barrere wrote: post #5

(disclaimer: I run https://www.wisecashhq.com - cash flow forecasting tool) I do not cope with that bug because it wouldn't go away - and product building is just so much fun :-) I agree that freelancing is hard, on the long run at least. My current solution to this is to mix consulting and product building. If you can project your cash flow, you can figure out how many days of consulting are required, and at which r…

> Then you have to find clients that will accept to keep you around for a limited number of days per week, as well.

This is the hardest bit, at least in Europe and according to my experience. Cheers for the link, I'll look into it.

Re: Ask HN: left the consulting company I started, what now?

#12

Post by thibaut_barrere » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 1:55 PM UTC

koevet wrote: post #11

thibaut_barrere wrote: post #5

(disclaimer: I run https://www.wisecashhq.com - cash flow forecasting tool) I do not cope with that bug because it wouldn't go away - and product building is just so much fun :-) I agree that freelancing is hard, on the long run at least. My current solution to this is to mix consulting and product building. If you can project your cash flow, you can figure out how many days of consulting are required, and at which r…

> Then you have to find clients that will accept to keep you around for a limited number of days per week, as well. This is the hardest bit, at least in Europe and according to my experience. Cheers for the link, I'll look into it.

The trick is to have enough "time-wealth" (eg: independence, in days) to be able to turn down contracts because they do not match what you want.

I'm doing this from Europe :-)

Re: Ask HN: left the consulting company I started, what now?

#13

Post by thibaut_barrere » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 1:59 PM UTC

koevet wrote: post #8

gexla wrote: post #7

> I already miss running my company You are freelancing now. You are already running your own company. You were doing consulting before, and now you are consulting in the same space. This is the same space your company was operating in but you left for financial reasons. Now you find consulting is a bitch, but apparently consulting was a bitch with the company you left. It does sound like something needs to change. I…

Freelancing in Europe is most of the time very similar to be a full time employee. You have to show up at your customer's premises and work for 8/9 hours with the other employees. No way to deal with more than one client at the time, unless you start working 16 hours a day - which I'm not afraid of - but it's not a sustainable model on the long run. So, no, I don't think that being a freelance is equivalent to runnin…

I switched to "5 hours sessions" per day and I'm focusing on 2 clients, so that I have time for my SaaS, for my family, and as well a bit of margin to handle emergencies.

(but I definitely agree that freelancing and running a SaaS or product-oriented company is absolutely not the same...)

Re: Ask HN: left the consulting company I started, what now?

#14

Post by swissnamir » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 3:49 PM UTC

koevet wrote: post #9

kfk wrote: post #6

I strongly believe that automation (DevOps but also software life cycle automation) has huge potential in the enterprise world. Can you be more specific on what you mean by automation?

By automation I mean: - Server provisioning (Puppet, Chef, Pallet and so on) - Software life cycle automation (Continuous Integration and deployment, automated testing, scaling testing to virtualized environments, static code analysis) - Cloud-based automation - same as server provisioning but on the cloud and with different providers Lots of enterprises don't invest much time and effort in automating their infrastru…

Were you able to do any consulting around continuos deployment - integration etc. i'm curious to know if any of your existing client would buy a short workshop that covers topics such as automated provisioning, TDD ... etc. it could be a lean way to start building your frameworks , tailor specific things that create value for your client

Re: Ask HN: left the consulting company I started, what now?

#15

Post by itstripe » Wed, Oct 16, 2013, 7:44 PM UTC

swissnamir wrote: post #14

koevet wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By automation I mean: - Server provisioning (Puppet, Chef, Pallet and so on) - Software life cycle automation (Continuous Integration and deployment, automated testing, scaling testing to virtualized environments, static code analysis) - Cloud-based automation - same as server provisioning but on the cloud and with different providers Lots of enterprises don't invest much time and effort in automating their infrastru…

Were you able to do any consulting around continuos deployment - integration etc. i'm curious to know if any of your existing client would buy a short workshop that covers topics such as automated provisioning, TDD ... etc. it could be a lean way to start building your frameworks , tailor specific things that create value for your client

You can always buy a software intended to provide some service. A good example is telecommunications - it's always needed and provides continuous cash flow. A good example is VoIP or SMS sending software. You can check such software here: http://www.itstripe.com/smpp-server/