Can you publish a very short and concise case study of how you've helped one of your clients? Would that client be down to reference you to their friends? If not, can you go the extra mile with them so they just gush about you to others?
Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
51–60 of 165 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#52General 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)
> Claude can so the expert stuff with a non-expert (at least in their mind)
Opus is far better at most surface-level tasks than it is at tasks that require deep knowledge and understanding of domains; someone who is a complete generalist (who thus has only surface level knowledge in many, many things) is far more replaceable with LLMs than someone who has deep knowledge in one.
Consider the way LLMs actually are created; they are not created from billions of repos with deep knowledge behind them. The majority of their knowledge comes from a massive amount of surface-level work that's been done and can be sampled from: React starter templates, starter templates + what little customization someone needed, blog-tutorial-level stuff.
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#53I hangout on a few Slack groups (Elixir, Ruby, etc), got quite a few projects this way as the founders were looking for experienced consultants. It also helps if you could show either/both: * a portfolio / clients you've worked with * open source / "street-cred" When I was looking for projects I always attach my Github profile ( https://github.com/fredwu ) to show my open source contributions, and also the SaaS produ…
This is solid advice. I'd add that community presence matters more than you might think—but it has to be genuine. Hanging out in Slack groups and actually helping people (without immediately pitching) builds real relationships. When you do mention you're consulting, people already know your work quality.
The portfolio/OSS combo is key because it removes risk. Clients can see what you actually ship, not just what you claim. Even small open source contributions help more than you'd expect.
One thing missing: referrals. Your first few clients are the hardest. But if you do good work, they'll refer others. That becomes your growth engine pretty quickly, so don't treat early clients as one-offs.
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#54General 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)
Sibling commenters seem to be confused.
Usually experts are T shaped. Acquiring expertise always means the time spent is away from learning something else.
The deeper and greater the expertise the more niche the topic usually becomes and the less demand there is.
The world might need X million web developers but how many experts are there in browser technology. Or even experts in that domain something more niche like rendering or rendering niche like Angle and WebGL..you already go this deep and it boils down to a handful of individuals.
Also I didn't say that there would not be demand just that many businesses are not willing to pay for it anymore. Industry layoffs, AI are huge leverages that any potential employer can use to have all the advantage when negotiating compensation.
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#55How? I had a set of letterhead/envelopes/business cards printed up. I had already been "hanging-out" in the local electronics surplus stores, where they also sold used computer parts and the like. Stacked around the cash registers in these stores at that time were business cards. Various specialists. So I kept my own maintained stack of cards in my two main goto-stores, and I was friends with the register clerks, and had them handing out my cards on occasions when somebody came in the store and wanted help with "something". After 8 months of doing this, and being flat-broke, the day before Christmas, somebody telephoned off of my business card, and asked if I could do something. He brought some sample stuff, and I accepted a $200-per week retainer from him (I was really good at budgeting and that was what I had been getting for UEI until it ended). He had brought his checkbook with him, and wrote me a check. That started my personal word-of-mouth network and kept me going for a few decades.
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#56I made monkeys.zip - a project that was completely useless and reflects my interests and skills, and people have reached out with creative projects since
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#57Basically, I reached out to existing relationships. A few had needs I could fill. A few referred me to others.
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#58General 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…
+1 about overseas freelancers. And US customer to European freelancer is not the arb it used to be. The California SaaS sector has collapsed in the wake of venture capital rotating into AI-native, saas budgets (salaries) are down, the dollar is down, and remote European salaries are up. Zoom latency across 7-8h timezone difference is workable, the current arb is to hire from further and further east. Unless there is…
Are you using 'arb' to mean something like cheat or trick, or cost-saving technique?
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 about overseas freelancers. And US customer to European freelancer is not the arb it used to be. The California SaaS sector has collapsed in the wake of venture capital rotating into AI-native, saas budgets (salaries) are down, the dollar is down, and remote European salaries are up. Zoom latency across 7-8h timezone difference is workable, the current arb is to hire from further and further east. Unless there is…
Are you using 'arb' to mean something like cheat or trick, or cost-saving technique?
Arbitrage I assume
Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
#60The gist is to mine your network, and the best is when you can have contacts as champions in your clients’ companies. Here are a few good readings;
- [20 Lessons for Attracting, Signing, and Retaining Great Clients](https://www.theforcingfunction.com/blog/service-business)([archive](https://archive.is/B0bWG))
- [How to be a Consultant, a Freelancer, or an Independent Contractor](https://jacquesmattheij.com/be-consultant/) ([archive](https://archive.is/iun16))
- [How to Find Consulting Clients](https://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-i-learned-to-get-consulting-l...) ([archive](https://archive.is/STvcv))
- [The Strategic Independent](https://tomcritchlow.com/strategy/) ([archive](https://archive.is/O5OKC))
- [A retiring consultant’s advice on consultants](https://www.economist.com/business/2023/08/17/a-retiring-con...) ([archive](https://archive.is/Slqwj))
- [How to Find Consulting Clients](https://chrisachard.com/how-to-find-consulting-clients)([archive](https://archive.ph/kBPDL))