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Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

#21

Post by bazillion »

kls wrote: post #14
davismwfl wrote: post #13

I have been in your shoes and it is how I started 2 consulting companies now. We lost a number of people to two different product acquisitions and then gained a few etc. Always a bit of an ebb and flow, but it has generally worked well for me since 1999. BTW I am also in Florida. It sounds to me as if you are missing the key ingredient to the mix, you need marketing and business management/development of some sort. M…

It has usually taken the form of 1-3 large contracts but from time to time we pick up smaller stuff. I would love to get together sometime if you would like, I am always down for networking and it's easy to talk me into lunch. My contact info is in my profile, feel free to ping me and we can set something up. I can probably twist Hung's arm into a meal as well.

I'd like to point out that if you want to head up the business development or increase your skillset enough to get the ball rolling for solidifying your team, you need to be more aggressive with your networking.

davismwfl lists his email in his profile and gave you an open invitation to talk with him and especially soak up the knowledge that he has gained from starting two consulting companies. In an instance like that, you want to be the one contacting him, sussing out his schedule, giving him a few options for when you could possibly meet, and following up with him consistently when you get radio silence.

This is not meant to be an attack on your approach, but I read your response as extremely passive (easy to talk me into lunch, probably twist Hung's arm), and an aggressive approach where you actively engage an interested party is what will lead you to succeed in that role.

I understand that taking on that role might not be your forte, so you might be reluctant in fully embracing it. How I would approach it is by attacking the problem head on so you don't have to bring in a business development person who is a complete unknown within your group, and just trusting them to get the job done. Go to local meetup groups, and maybe even meetups within a 2+ hour radius. Troll craigslist for potential clients nationwide. Maybe even line up a couple projects with a freelancing website just to get the ball rolling -- projects that make economic sense (being able to complete a project with 2-5 of your man-hours for 500-1000 dollars).

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

#22

Post by kls »

bazillion wrote: post #21
kls wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has usually taken the form of 1-3 large contracts but from time to time we pick up smaller stuff. I would love to get together sometime if you would like, I am always down for networking and it's easy to talk me into lunch. My contact info is in my profile, feel free to ping me and we can set something up. I can probably twist Hung's arm into a meal as well.

I'd like to point out that if you want to head up the business development or increase your skillset enough to get the ball rolling for solidifying your team, you need to be more aggressive with your networking. davismwfl lists his email in his profile and gave you an open invitation to talk with him and especially soak up the knowledge that he has gained from starting two consulting companies. In an instance like th…

You are correct, honestly Hung and I have played hot potato with the role and I don't think either of us truly want the role. I first fell into it and then as of late Hung has been more at the forefront but yes your perception is spot on, neither of us are totally comfortable in the role. Hence the constant talk about hiring for the position, but the reality is Hung and I pitch well when we are in the door because we are technologist, we tried an arrangement with a recruiter a while back and came to the conclusion that he just could not pitch the technology at the level we can. But we deal at a very technical to technical level, when we pitch to people that understand technology we always walk away with a contract. When we pitch to people who do not have technical staff we get locked into a rut where they are afraid to commit. We do not seem to have the sales skills to move non-technical individuals out of this rut, we don't know how to break out of this. I know it is due to not having the right sales skills on the team, but we tried an individual with strong closing skills but light on technical and that did not work out well.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

#23

Post by pan69 »

kls wrote: post #19
pan69 wrote: post #18

Genius, pitch your service disguised in a genuine question. :) But in all seriousness, with the team you have, it sounds like you need a full time business development person. Ideally that would be you but maybe this is not part of your skill set. To feed those mouths you need revenue and getting work through the door is a full time job. A bizdev person can be expensive but the idea is that they pay for themselves (e…

Genius, pitch your service disguised in a genuine question. :) I know it's not out of the realm of possibility on HN and I do like that HN is not adverse to shameless promotion but my first and foremost interest is in the opinions of the group on how to parlay this into what the team wants. As we just keep circling this subject, one of our big contracts is winding down again so the subject has once again come to the…

>> One of the things about us is that money is equally split among the team. None of us take a cut off the top.

That's interesting. So, there is actually no money to grow the business? I.e. profit that can be reinvested for growth? This might actually be the root cause of your problem (although it's difficult to tell).

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

#24

Post by bazillion »

kls wrote: post #22
bazillion wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to point out that if you want to head up the business development or increase your skillset enough to get the ball rolling for solidifying your team, you need to be more aggressive with your networking. davismwfl lists his email in his profile and gave you an open invitation to talk with him and especially soak up the knowledge that he has gained from starting two consulting companies. In an instance like th…

You are correct, honestly Hung and I have played hot potato with the role and I don't think either of us truly want the role. I first fell into it and then as of late Hung has been more at the forefront but yes your perception is spot on, neither of us are totally comfortable in the role. Hence the constant talk about hiring for the position, but the reality is Hung and I pitch well when we are in the door because we…

I think you can make up the difference when you are pitching to non-technologists by bridging your current gap in your pitch with research on the company you are pitching to. What I would do in that instance is get a feel for their product and what their market is, and in the pitch relate everything to graphs of what their trajectory might look like and what their trajectory could be using your technology. Show the curve of their current growth and a curve that breaks up much sooner which represents what their growth rate could be. Back that up with data and solutions about how you're going to increase their revenue.

I think what impresses non-technologists the most is if you have a full and utter grasp of their business, not just their product offerings. You can show great prescience if you can thoroughly research their products and say things like "I bet your customers have said that they wish they had x feature", or "Have you considered y alternate method to monetizing your core product?". Chances are, all the ideas you toss out they will have thought of, but it will show that you're in the business of helping them get to business solutions and not just build them some cool software. This will make them feel like you're on their team, and greatly increase the chance of landing a contract.

Consequently, if you find this part to be difficult (extracting the core business that someone is in from their product offerings) then it becomes more and more difficult to pitch technology solutions, since you're basically missing the whole point of their company and just attacking their pain points from the outside->in. Whoever is in the role of gathering contracts should be able to direct all of your technological forces into a business solutions package, instead of a technological solutions package.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

#25

Post by kls »

pan69 wrote: post #23
kls wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genius, pitch your service disguised in a genuine question. :) I know it's not out of the realm of possibility on HN and I do like that HN is not adverse to shameless promotion but my first and foremost interest is in the opinions of the group on how to parlay this into what the team wants. As we just keep circling this subject, one of our big contracts is winding down again so the subject has once again come to the…

>> One of the things about us is that money is equally split among the team. None of us take a cut off the top. That's interesting. So, there is actually no money to grow the business? I.e. profit that can be reinvested for growth? This might actually be the root cause of your problem (although it's difficult to tell).

No we don't really keep a fund as we are technically not a business. Some of us have our own consultancy but the rate we negotiate per head goes directly to each contributing member of the team.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

#26

Post by davismwfl »

kls wrote: post #22
bazillion wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to point out that if you want to head up the business development or increase your skillset enough to get the ball rolling for solidifying your team, you need to be more aggressive with your networking. davismwfl lists his email in his profile and gave you an open invitation to talk with him and especially soak up the knowledge that he has gained from starting two consulting companies. In an instance like th…

You are correct, honestly Hung and I have played hot potato with the role and I don't think either of us truly want the role. I first fell into it and then as of late Hung has been more at the forefront but yes your perception is spot on, neither of us are totally comfortable in the role. Hence the constant talk about hiring for the position, but the reality is Hung and I pitch well when we are in the door because we…

bazillion hit on a couple of things I totally agree with.

One of the things I do is troll Craigslist off and on. We have a contract right now valued around $90k from a single phone call to a poorly written craigslist ad that I reached out to. Not bad for literally about 30 minutes of a phone call and 90 minutes of discussions and negotiations.

No one will represent you the way you can if you are willing to learn some skills, but sometimes you need the outside help. However, a little mentoring/guidance can go a long way if you are willing.

In the end work will not find you guys until you have a niche and decent reputation, and even then people who say they never look for clients I think are not being totally honest. I met with one successful and smart guy who runs a consultancy and he swears he never looks for work it "just finds him". Well, that is sort of true but not really the whole truth or being totally honest. Specifically in his case, he does a lot of tech training, writing and is involved in a specific tech scene. So in the end he is doing a ton of marketing and talking about his team and their abilities, he's just not out cold calling or using a lot of traditional marketing.

Also, consulting can enter into feast or famine mode unless you designate someone to keep deal flow moving. This isn't optional and can't be something you do half hearted. It takes dedication, but it doesn't have to be sole sucking shit work, it should be fun and be a lot about pre-sales and pre-qualification of clients. It can even be something that is a shared duty but it has to be dedicated time every week.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

#27

Post by kls »

davismwfl wrote: post #26
kls wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, honestly Hung and I have played hot potato with the role and I don't think either of us truly want the role. I first fell into it and then as of late Hung has been more at the forefront but yes your perception is spot on, neither of us are totally comfortable in the role. Hence the constant talk about hiring for the position, but the reality is Hung and I pitch well when we are in the door because we…

bazillion hit on a couple of things I totally agree with. One of the things I do is troll Craigslist off and on. We have a contract right now valued around $90k from a single phone call to a poorly written craigslist ad that I reached out to. Not bad for literally about 30 minutes of a phone call and 90 minutes of discussions and negotiations. No one will represent you the way you can if you are willing to learn some…

it should be fun and be a lot about pre-sales and pre-qualification of clients.

One of the things that we have been caught up in before is a continuous sales cycle where the client has no intention of actually committing to picking up our services but rather is seeing how much pre-consulting work they can get out of us. This has only happened a couple of times in our history but when it does it is costly to whoever is working the sale as it's not really a salaried deal with us. So we get a little gun shy about extensive pre-sales. As well we are trying to move away from a contracting / consulting service and into something that we have some ownership of.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

#28

Post by raincom »

pan69 wrote: post #18

Genius, pitch your service disguised in a genuine question. :) But in all seriousness, with the team you have, it sounds like you need a full time business development person. Ideally that would be you but maybe this is not part of your skill set. To feed those mouths you need revenue and getting work through the door is a full time job. A bizdev person can be expensive but the idea is that they pay for themselves (e…

That's how offshoring companies like Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, Wipro, do: bizdev person gets a fat cut like x% from the offshoring contract. They are like enterprise sales at big companies.

In the states, most of bizdev is about selling a product. Companies like IBM do swap deals: AT&T outsources it IT work, in return IBM buys stuff from ATT (cellphone, network, phone services, etc).

So, the parent poster should troll on Linkedin and look for the bizdev folks who work for Indian offshoring companies, and network with them, and see where it leads to.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

#29

Post by davismwfl »

davismwfl wrote: post #26
kls wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, honestly Hung and I have played hot potato with the role and I don't think either of us truly want the role. I first fell into it and then as of late Hung has been more at the forefront but yes your perception is spot on, neither of us are totally comfortable in the role. Hence the constant talk about hiring for the position, but the reality is Hung and I pitch well when we are in the door because we…

bazillion hit on a couple of things I totally agree with. One of the things I do is troll Craigslist off and on. We have a contract right now valued around $90k from a single phone call to a poorly written craigslist ad that I reached out to. Not bad for literally about 30 minutes of a phone call and 90 minutes of discussions and negotiations. No one will represent you the way you can if you are willing to learn some…

part of the pre-qualification is shutting down pre-sales when the client is just sucking you dry for no benefit. The key is getting from talking to action. Like I said, that can be pretty damn fast once you get some practice at it and learn which key words to look for and how to direct the conversation to decisions.

Developers many (maybe most) times get to wrapped up in the details of the project and forget to close the deal first, leading the clients to "take advantage" of you. We have all done it and still do it from time to time. It is smart to use a pre-qualification interview of a few questions. You don't do it in the "interview" style, but you get some qualifying questions in so you can frame the project to see if it is even a decent match before you put too much time into it. Budget and timeframe are the two critical keys to get out in the open early, which generally prevents a huge portion of wasted time on both sides. Not only that, it has let me refer leads to other shops/developers that might be a better fit and then I will get a referral fee. Likewise, I happily pay referral fees to others who send clients my way.

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