This is a person who obviously has a lot of talent and a lot of specialised knowledge. I doubt most people can get properly paid consulting work or get to product stage as fast as she clearly could.
On Starting a Software Business
51–60 of 154 posts
Re: On Starting a Software Business
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd like to hear more specific experiences on switching from working for free to $CONSULTING_RATE for the same client I helped a local business group with their website, their previous host shut down and all they had was an archive on CD, they had some quotes for 10-20 hours to get it back up and running (and then everyone wanted to charge them hosting/domain registration). I did the work for free. A couple hours imp…
This is an example of a more general problem with undercharging (or doing spec work) in any creative industry. If you don't charge what you're worth, perhaps because you're trying to be helpful or offering "mate's rates", then you may get one happy client but you'll also get underpaid. Then that client will happily recommend your (excellent value!) services to their friends and colleagues who are also looking for (ex…
>>> dissuade potential clients who can't or won't pay decent professional rates and all the other similar potential clients in their network.
Agree. Keeping cheap and non paying clients AWAY should be a top priority for any business. In consulting, that's achieved by ALWAYS charging and being clear about your rate.
Re: On Starting a Software Business
#53Consulting doesn't scale, software does. One pragmatic strategy to find product/customers: 1) Pick an industry 2) Ask someone in that industry what they use spreadsheets for 3) Build something better There is a lot of 'cybernetic' processes that are a mix of humans with domain knowledge and machines with spreadsheets for schemaless storage and querying. Generally the move is to encode the domain knowledge into code a…
Accenture revenue in 2016, $32.9 billion. Consulting definitely scales.
O(n) vs O(log n)
Re: On Starting a Software Business
#54Observe what people are doing inefficiently that you can fix. Test whether they'd buy it with google adwords or facebook ads and conversion rate to filling out the form and putting in credit card. Refund everyone. Imagine how it would be viral and test your hypothesis as well. So your customer acquisitin cost goes down exponentially!
Do you mean before building the actual product?
Re: On Starting a Software Business
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not if you live in the bay area
You're right. I would like to amend my comment to exclude the .004% of the Earths surface that is the Bay Area.
Not sure if you're making a jab at the fact that the Bay Area is relatively small compared to most of the world, but I thought it was a relevant comment because HN is disproportionately located in Bay Area.
Re: On Starting a Software Business
#56This is a person who obviously has a lot of talent and a lot of specialised knowledge. I doubt most people can get properly paid consulting work or get to product stage as fast as she clearly could.
I'd like to see some responses to this from some gurus. I have the same problem. I have a bunch of generalized skill but I feel not enough to make large $ with consulting.
I don't attribute this to impostor syndrome.
Re: On Starting a Software Business
#57Re: On Starting a Software Business
#58- "We can make a decent salary out of this" - 36 months - 48 months I started and 10 years later made a successfully exit from my company, we never raised any money, the above figure is what it took us to go from financing our development our self (by having two jobs), to having enough customers to break even. I think everyone should, bootstrap one company to get a feel for how it is, will make you a better entrepren…
Exactly the same setup as you, although I've not sold my company as I'm a happy owner (https://www.atlascode.com).
I launched Atlas in 2007, just one year prior to the economic crisis that followed. Nothing ensures that you keep an eye on every bill that is paid and focus ruthlessly on efficiency gains more than a global financial catastrophe. Getting through that taught me I was capable of running an already tough business under pretty much any circumstances, and gave me an incredible confidence boost.
Not that I'd recommend it, definitely some of the toughest years of my working career.
Re: On Starting a Software Business
#59Consulting doesn't scale, software does. One pragmatic strategy to find product/customers: 1) Pick an industry 2) Ask someone in that industry what they use spreadsheets for 3) Build something better There is a lot of 'cybernetic' processes that are a mix of humans with domain knowledge and machines with spreadsheets for schemaless storage and querying. Generally the move is to encode the domain knowledge into code a…
Accenture revenue in 2016, $32.9 billion. Consulting definitely scales.
True, and interestingly the way that they scale and remain profitable is by going after specific industries offering quite specific consulting services. From the outside it looks like generic "consulting" but actually they sell packages that are quite specific.
Re: On Starting a Software Business
#60Consulting doesn't scale, software does. One pragmatic strategy to find product/customers: 1) Pick an industry 2) Ask someone in that industry what they use spreadsheets for 3) Build something better There is a lot of 'cybernetic' processes that are a mix of humans with domain knowledge and machines with spreadsheets for schemaless storage and querying. Generally the move is to encode the domain knowledge into code a…
Accenture revenue in 2016, $32.9 billion. Consulting definitely scales.
The point is scaling without increasing linearly the number of employees. Accenture has approx. 400K employees