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If you want to work on product ideas, you are much better doing that while you still have a day job, rather than trying to do it while you are also worrying about where your next contract is going to come from.
Lets say that you're a small start up past the MVP stage. What would be the types of tasks that you would outsource to a consulting firm? Isn't it much more likely that you would try to hire full time and build a team / culture? Does consulting even work for this market segment?
Finding the right employee can take time, and hiring the wrong person can destroy a team's productivity. Better to pay a premium than to get burned.
This should be the top priority. You personally don't want to be tied up to any client/project. You could help developers as time permits. But your priority should be about getting projects, hiring, managing cashflow keeping it profitable. Not very "engineer-ish". If you are a hardcore developer - you will (almost) hate doing this. Assuming you can get high value projects - executing those projects while keeping the customer and the team happy - is a perpetual challenge.
> Should I prioritize our online sales channels over local ones?
Local ones are always better and surprisingly easier compared to online sales that are highly competitive. The only discomfort is to actually move out of your office and meet people in person. The exception is if local ones are financially infeasible. You should also do online sales - And people (top 5-10%) do earn money from online projects too, so do not let myths discourage you from going online.
> Should I hire a salesperson to look for projects?
After some time - Yes. You should be the first sales person for your firm. Later you will be able to define sales-team profile that you need
> Should we have mentors/coaches?
I believe the answer is Yes in longer term. And by this time you would have been already successful but the growth might feel stagnant (or just boring).
> Switch from contract work to our products gradually.
A product guy is usually always good at consulting - but moving from consulting to products is pretty difficult. And it's definitely not because of the lack of execution capability.
If your goal is to do products - do just that and don't get into consulting. And it is easier to start validating, building product as an employee - compared to owning a consulting firm.
Thought to consider - if you really want to make your own products to sell, just jump right to working on that and spend all your energy doing that. Unless you genuinely want to do consulting work, of course.
Consider that starting and running a business is the same amount of work from the paperwork perspective. And a consulting firm just sells services where results are often owned by the client- whereas the product you make for your own company can be owned by you.
That's not to dissuade you at all if it is your dream to take this path. Just food for thought about what your dream really is and how much time/money you have to pursuse it.
- Look for projects everywhere. Even if someone is looking for an individual freelancer, there's no harm in presenting yourself as a team and trying to get the gig anyway.
- Local, remote, doesn't matter. The quality of the project is what matters most in my experience. Burnout matters even more when your team is small and everyone is relying on getting income from a project.
- Definitely reach out to other agencies, particularly local ones. Tell them you can help with overload and custom coding problems they might not have the in-house talent to tackle.
- I've never had a mentor/coach, so I can't really say if it's worth it.
- You should probably start by doing the outreach yourselves. Try subscribing to some paid curated lead generation services for freelancers/agencies. For a couple hundred dollars a month you can get dozens of leads sent to your inbox every day and a few of those might be promising. Follow up with everyone relentlessly. I use a service called Cloze for this.
Other thoughts:
- Keep expenses other than payroll in mind as they can add up. You can probably start with less, but there are a lot of great tools that can streamline things and save your team a lot of time. We pay for a co-working space, DocuSign, Slack, GetHarvest, UberConference, Google Apps, and Cloze, to name the ones I can remember right now.
- It's a really good idea to have a written contract with all of your clients. This is my favorite video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3RJhoqgK8. The lawyer in that video, Gabe, reviews all of our contracts and he really is my favorite person to pay.
Best of luck!
Lets say that you're a small start up past the MVP stage. What would be the types of tasks that you would outsource to a consulting firm? Isn't it much more likely that you would try to hire full time and build a team / culture? Does consulting even work for this market segment?
There are situation it makes sense. Mostly around needing a specific feature by a certain date. Maybe for a particular sale, or maybe to lure a certain investor in. Either way, if your team is saturated already, and the new feature is something they aren't fond of building (eg: something heavy on frontend when your team is mostly backend), then a contractor or consultant is often the only way to have it built on time…
I'd rather go entirely opposite. 1. Get clients and start working for them. If you don't have more than one clear customer who already wants you, you're not ready for anything further in this list. 2. Incorporate and handle the core legal and financial stuff (only when #1 is solidly working!) 3. Setup the business processes and workflow; 4. Start aggressively looking for more projects - not online, though. The projec…
I'd rather go entirely opposite. 1. Get clients and start working for them. If you don't have more than one clear customer who already wants you, you're not ready for anything further in this list. 2. Incorporate and handle the core legal and financial stuff (only when #1 is solidly working!) 3. Setup the business processes and workflow; 4. Start aggressively looking for more projects - not online, though. The projec…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are situation it makes sense. Mostly around needing a specific feature by a certain date. Maybe for a particular sale, or maybe to lure a certain investor in. Either way, if your team is saturated already, and the new feature is something they aren't fond of building (eg: something heavy on frontend when your team is mostly backend), then a contractor or consultant is often the only way to have it built on time…
Do you think that there's room for consistent work from a company like this, or would it be more project specific work like you explained?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mandatory reading: win without pitching manifesto I was skeptical for too long about this kind of advice and I've paid my fair share in lost opportunities. It really, really works. http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/
What's the gist of it?
This is a framework with 12 simple principles to reclaim the high ground in the client relationship, beat back the pitch and win new business without first having to part with your thinking for free. It enables stronger practices amid the forces of commoditization.
Of course Blair Enns is a better writer than me (English is not even my native language), but there we go:
1) specialize (another common rookie mistake is to position yourself as a generalist)
2) replace presentations with conversations
3) diagnose before prescribing
4) rethink the meaning of "to sell"
5) do with words what you used to do with paper (never again spend a night writhing a detailed quote for free)
6) be selective (don't waste your time with the wrong client)
7) build expertise fast (specialization helps)
8) do not solve problems before being paid (never let the client "pick your brain")
9) address money issues early (if you are unable to talk about money you will make no money)
10) refuse to work at a loss (be ready to fire abusive clients)
11) charge more
12) hold your head high