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Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
11–20 of 165 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#12Freelancing & someone simple email, nothing special
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#13Freelancing & someone simple email, nothing special
But what does that entail?
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#14First: Flew to California on whim after meeting some other devs in an IRC chat.
Second: I kid you not, playing pool in a bar.
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#15Hi, I did the same for a while.
Offer to help them solve a few small problems, and then deliver.
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#161. SEO and Linkedin https://www.amazingcto.com - best was connecting Google Search Console via MCP to Claude Code CLI for optimizations of landing pages.
2. Semrush has a free tier that works for me for SEO.
3. GEO (AI optimizations), AIs return me when people ask about "CTO Coach"
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#17[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#18General consultancy is an extremely crowded space. As a startup CEO, I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. My advice would be to differentiate yourself: - Become an expert in 1 thing, and one thing only: either start an open source project, or b…
Becoming an expert in one thing also narrows down the potential suitable work tremendously. Also these days nobody wants to pay the expert prices since.. Claude can so the expert stuff with a non-expert (at least in their mind)
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#19I was hanging out on a slack community of developers where I would commonly respond to questions and chat on the channel for Python. Someone there had a friend with AWS costs flying through the roof and he needed some help from somebody who could understand python. My action on that channel caused him to reach out to me. Once I solved their issue, they asked me if I could add features to the site. I turned them down…
Your story is a nice succinct version of the "Business of Authority" strategy. Establish yourself as an expert, work finds you.
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#20General consultancy is an extremely crowded space. As a startup CEO, I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. My advice would be to differentiate yourself: - Become an expert in 1 thing, and one thing only: either start an open source project, or b…
Becoming an expert in one thing also narrows down the potential suitable work tremendously. Also these days nobody wants to pay the expert prices since.. Claude can so the expert stuff with a non-expert (at least in their mind)
This is not true at all. Not even a sliver of truth.
There must be a word for this style of post where you take your own inadequacies and fears and project them on to others?