31–40 of 45 posts
He said something like "resources are allocated by customers not managers, so choose your first customers carefully".
The point is if your customers are for your consulting business they will allocate your resources in that direction.
Paul was right when he said not to do side consulting work. For me it was simple; a 3-month consulting gig will give me a financial runway for the next year. So I am doing it, and nothing else. Come December 1st I will have enough to live comfortably for the next year, probably 2 years if I move to somewhere cheaper and bring my fiancee over.
Are you sure Paul was right? If you can pay for a years expenses in 3 months, it sure sounds like you're in a good position to hire; pay someone to reduce consulting workload, and pay someone to work product. 'mahmud, this isn't particle surgery. This is every real consultancy. Ever.
It doesn't take a very savvy client to notice when throughput drops by a factor of 10. So unless you're a body shop that's already sending out mystery devs, or you're very good at explaining away a huge drop in productivity, hiring is not going to help this situation at all.
Thus the solution is simple, at least in theory: make money. Now.
Charge more.
A higher hourly rate isn't always the best answer. Some clients require more managing than others, have poorly organized projects, or terrible schedule requirements. Any of these will destroy your ability to run a startup just as much as going broke. Pick clients that result in a low overhead for you.
I've cut my client list down from a dozen or so to just 2 big clients. One pays me a high dollar rate and is the sort of client who just shoots me an email saying, "hey can you spend 6 hours on this thing". The other is a long term project which is basically guaranteed work for the next 12 months or more. This is lower paying, but provides 20-40 hours a month of consistent work. Both clients are low maintenance, easy to deal with and flexible.
For me, it doesn't matter how big the hourly rate is if I'm getting hassled every day of the week. It's as much about your time as it about your income.
I'm not free from consulting (and want to continue doing it as well actually!), but a few points: * I treat each of my own projects just like a regular client * I consider all the projects like a 'scrum' of 'scrums' (ie: I get to prioritize between projects just like I prioritize inside a given project) * for billable and non-billable projects, I take great care to ensure I keep a sustainable rhythm (I work a lot per…
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1604820 (techniques to prioritize between projects and inside a project)
Paul was right when he said not to do side consulting work. For me it was simple; a 3-month consulting gig will give me a financial runway for the next year. So I am doing it, and nothing else. Come December 1st I will have enough to live comfortably for the next year, probably 2 years if I move to somewhere cheaper and bring my fiancee over.
Are you sure Paul was right? If you can pay for a years expenses in 3 months, it sure sounds like you're in a good position to hire; pay someone to reduce consulting workload, and pay someone to work product. 'mahmud, this isn't particle surgery. This is every real consultancy. Ever.
Somethings are best done by yourself.
And yes, Paul was right; I barely have any mind for our startup anymore. I live and dream the consulting gig; it monopolizes my imagination, and all I can do after a grueling 12 hour day of work is watch Family Guy and drink beer in bed like a bum.
Paul was right when he said not to do side consulting work. For me it was simple; a 3-month consulting gig will give me a financial runway for the next year. So I am doing it, and nothing else. Come December 1st I will have enough to live comfortably for the next year, probably 2 years if I move to somewhere cheaper and bring my fiancee over.
what kind of consulting work did you do?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure Paul was right? If you can pay for a years expenses in 3 months, it sure sounds like you're in a good position to hire; pay someone to reduce consulting workload, and pay someone to work product. 'mahmud, this isn't particle surgery. This is every real consultancy. Ever.
When I find someone with both that much domain knowledge, and broad peripheral expertise, it will most likely cost me north of $200/hr, leaving me nothing. Not only that, but the hiring and looking is some extra chore I can do without. In the time it takes me to follow up with applicants, I would have gone through 15% of the project. Somethings are best done by yourself. And yes, Paul was right; I barely have any min…
Paul was "right" because he thinks about consulting like you do: as a day job without benefits. The difference between a day job and a consultancy is that your day job gets pretty upset when you hire someone to do your grunt work.
You seem dead set on scaling the wall when there's a perfectly good ladder hanging right off it. Stop killing yourself on a contract so you can earn the right to kill yourself on a startup project that will very likely fail (they all do). Engineer a solution to your current problem ("people will pay my company $8000/week to do something and I am currently the only person in my company"). That has to be easier than trying to figure out how get "liftoff" with a "1 year runway". Sheesh.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure Paul was right? If you can pay for a years expenses in 3 months, it sure sounds like you're in a good position to hire; pay someone to reduce consulting workload, and pay someone to work product. 'mahmud, this isn't particle surgery. This is every real consultancy. Ever.
Presumably you're charging the rate you charge because you're you. You can't simply drop Junior Dev Jimmy onto the project and keep billing away at the same rate. It doesn't take a very savvy client to notice when throughput drops by a factor of 10. So unless you're a body shop that's already sending out mystery devs, or you're very good at explaining away a huge drop in productivity, hiring is not going to help this…
So don't do that.
A steady $200/hr consulting gig offers an awful lot of wiggle room to figure this stuff out. When we hire a new consultant, (a) we're very picky and (b) they tag-team with us on projects, often for months, without being billable. That costs money in the short term, but pays for itself in the long term.
Also, it's wrong to assume that a consulting gig has to be performed by one person. Time and again friends of mine have found that they could hire cheap for 20-40% of their project work (documentation, test harness coding, automation, etc) and then had that person grow quickly into a full-on replacement. And all due respect to 'mahmud's domain knowledge, but the examples I'm thinking of are pretty high end.
At the end of the day, this problem is a fundamental challenge of running a business, and I have to respectfully/tentatively suggest that if you can't figure out how to hire and train a replacement for your own work, you stand very little chance of running a successful software company, where you'll also have to hire QA, ops, marketing, and sales.
Think of this current challenge like a warmup.