4 ms·

Congratulations -- but uhm... shouldn't you check back in with Patrick and make sure his needs are met? I mean, he's Customer #1, and it sounds like your react

by bmelton 16y ago

Congratulations -- but uhm... shouldn't you check back in with Patrick and make sure his needs are met? I mean, he's Customer #1, and it sounds like your reaction to that was to abandon him. I might be misreading, or Patrick may have backfilled you, but the 1 thing I know about business to be more true than most things, is you take care of your early customers, specifically if they were good to you.

tptacek 16y ago
Evolving relationships are a fact of life in consulting. Sometimes relationships grow, or even engulf the whole business, like Lucky Strike did for SCDP in Mad Men and Microsoft has done with a number of security consultancies. Other times, relationships become vestigial or vanish entirely. The entire point of consulting arrangements is to allow businesses to set the most flexible and reasonable terms to work under. If Patrick wanted a Wordpress theme factory forever, he could have made that a contract term. Somehow, I doubt he did. Matasano engaged Patrick. We may be one of his earliest clients! Somehow, I doubt he'll be as available for tactical one-off projects for much longer. That makes me happy.
- patio11 16y ago
  Matasano was client #2, and I just wrapped up at #3 (y'all know them, but they have a blog post due in November so I'll let them announce it). Suffice it to say "You have ample reason to be happy."
wwortiz 16y ago
From Patrick: > I'd be able to give you one project a month for $400 until you either got sick of doing them or decided to move upmarket. [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171663 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171663]
needmoney 16y ago
You're right. But Patrick indicated to me that he was happy for me and that he would understand if I couldn't go on. I'll be totally honest, I should've kept in better sync with him and I felt terrible that my 2nd project fell behind schedule, but I really found myself totally engulfed in putting out fires in my personal business. Nothing went according to plan. I didn't abandon his project though, I finished it and got it to him a little late. I was just looking at it again today and I saw some problems I hadn't noticed before, so I sent him a patch. It's really only now that I'm starting to get back a bit of time where I can do things like write this. I sent him an email telling him about this thread, but I'd bet he's asleep now.
- barrydahlberg 16y ago
  Nothing went according to plan... Sounds like a typical startup plan to me!
  - Mz 16y ago
    "I love it when a plan comes together" -- An ironic quote from "The A Team", something their leader said every time something finally came together in spite of a zillion disasters and, no, it never went according to plan.
patio11 16y ago
I got exactly what I wanted: a beautiful theme done for $400. As I recall he was worried a bit about leaving me in the lurch later. I told him that he didn't need my blessing to move on, but had it anyway.

by bmelton 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago

Evolving relationships are a fact of life in consulting. Sometimes relationships grow, or even engulf the whole business, like Lucky Strike did for SCDP in Mad Men and Microsoft has done with a number of security consultancies. Other times, relationships become vestigial or vanish entirely. The entire point of consulting arrangements is to allow businesses to set the most flexible and reasonable terms to work under. If Patrick wanted a Wordpress theme factory forever, he could have made that a contract term. Somehow, I doubt he did. Matasano engaged Patrick. We may be one of his earliest clients! Somehow, I doubt he'll be as available for tactical one-off projects for much longer. That makes me happy.

patio11 16y ago
Matasano was client #2, and I just wrapped up at #3 (y'all know them, but they have a blog post due in November so I'll let them announce it). Suffice it to say "You have ample reason to be happy."

wwortiz 16y ago

From Patrick: > I'd be able to give you one project a month for $400 until you either got sick of doing them or decided to move upmarket. [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171663 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171663]

needmoney 16y ago

You're right. But Patrick indicated to me that he was happy for me and that he would understand if I couldn't go on. I'll be totally honest, I should've kept in better sync with him and I felt terrible that my 2nd project fell behind schedule, but I really found myself totally engulfed in putting out fires in my personal business. Nothing went according to plan. I didn't abandon his project though, I finished it and got it to him a little late. I was just looking at it again today and I saw some problems I hadn't noticed before, so I sent him a patch. It's really only now that I'm starting to get back a bit of time where I can do things like write this. I sent him an email telling him about this thread, but I'd bet he's asleep now.

barrydahlberg 16y ago
Nothing went according to plan... Sounds like a typical startup plan to me!
- Mz 16y ago
  "I love it when a plan comes together" -- An ironic quote from "The A Team", something their leader said every time something finally came together in spite of a zillion disasters and, no, it never went according to plan.

patio11 16y ago

I got exactly what I wanted: a beautiful theme done for $400. As I recall he was worried a bit about leaving me in the lurch later. I told him that he didn't need my blessing to move on, but had it anyway.