5 ms·

I have freelanced for almost 15 years in Europe and a bit of Middle East. I have done pretty well, charging easily 1K Euro a day, less in the last couple of yea

by koevet 14y ago

I have freelanced for almost 15 years in Europe and a bit of Middle East. I have done pretty well, charging easily 1K Euro a day, less in the last couple of years. Last year, with a colleague and friend, we started our consulting company. The main reason for that being "let's scale!". We contacted a bunch of freelance colleagues we trusted and respected and asked them to join us as hired guns, whenever we needed more workforce. Another reason for starting a company was that the developer profession is not rewarded as the experience increases. At least in Europe, a 3-4 years experience Java developer can make almost as much as a 10 years experience Java expert. And there are rate roofs which are hardly crossable, so even if you are really really good and have plenty of war stories, still the 1K/day roof is pretty hard to cross. So far, it didn't go exactly as expected. We are doing ok, we have some clients (we are in the Java space, so mostly enterprise stuff) but nothing spectacular. We are having an hard time acquiring new clients and the long running European crisis doesn't help. I'm working considerably more than in the past (weekends are a rare commodity, very long days, in short my work/life balance is critically crappy), so sometime I wonder if it's worth the hassle. The scalability part is very tough: we hired one guy (who was a disappointment) and we use our trusted hired guns, who are often busy with their own consulting gig. Therefore, we are crazy busy. Another problem is that the clients are really interested in our specific experience: that means they want to work with me or my partner, not with the company. This bit is hard to crack. In short we are still figuring out how to go from here. We will invest more in the web site and technical blog (we are also co-authoring a book) and we will hire one or two permanent devs (did I mention that hiring someone in Europe is bloody expensive, so that the 70% billable time mentioned in the article is too low?). Working solo is easy, scaling is not. As a developer, you are faced with plenty of new challenges (finance, marketing, pr, negotiations, contracts, cashflow) - which is fascinating but damn consuming.

luke_s 14y ago
"Another problem is that the clients are really interested in our specific experience: that means they want to work with me or my partner, not with the company. This bit is hard to crack." You certainly have a lot more business experience than I do - however I've been working recently on preparing a lots of tender responses. I work at a software consulting firm, with about 10 devs and 20 GIS analysts. In our tender responses we include the resumes of the people who will be working on the project as an appendix right at the back. At the front we have a section with our 'relevant experience'. In the 'relevant experience section' we NEVER mention which person worked on a specific project. Its always termed as "XYZ corp developed an app to ... " or "XYZ corp worked with ABC inc to ..." I guess it comes down to a metal shift in always describing things your company has achieved, instead of things you as an individual have done.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  Lots of clients require you to say, in your contract, who will be working on a project. They will inquire after individuals.
  - luke_s 14y ago
    Which is why our tender responses do include the resumes - just in an appendix at the back. The bit at the front, with screenshots and quotes from happy users just talks about what the company has done. You absolutely have to meet the customer requirements in your response. But its up to you where you place the emphasis :-)
- koevet 14y ago
  We are to small to even think of compete in one of the bids for a large company or the government. The majority of our engagements result from some kind of personal contact my partner or myself have in in our previous life as freelance consultants. Nevertheless, I see your point. It's just difficult to apply just yet. We also considered removing the "team" page from our site altogether and just discuss generically about the technologies and clients we have been working with. I did my homework and went through some marketing and web-marketing books. My catch is that for professional services companies - especially at the early stage, the "who are those guys" question is the first that springs to mind to a prospect and it would be suicidal to remove a reference to the admittedly impressive experience that we have accumulated along the years.
  - luke_s 14y ago
    Hmmmm ... I've actually been going around meeting a lot of digital marketing agencies (I've been doing a bit of Android freelancing in my spare time). They all seem really interested in the bids I have been putting together at my day job, but don't feel they are in a position to be able to tender on projects like that. I wonder what knowledge/skils/experience they need to be able to bid at that level? It seems like something really valuable to be able to train a company in...
  - timv 14y ago

by koevet 14y ago

luke_s 14y ago

"Another problem is that the clients are really interested in our specific experience: that means they want to work with me or my partner, not with the company. This bit is hard to crack." You certainly have a lot more business experience than I do - however I've been working recently on preparing a lots of tender responses. I work at a software consulting firm, with about 10 devs and 20 GIS analysts. In our tender responses we include the resumes of the people who will be working on the project as an appendix right at the back. At the front we have a section with our 'relevant experience'. In the 'relevant experience section' we NEVER mention which person worked on a specific project. Its always termed as "XYZ corp developed an app to ... " or "XYZ corp worked with ABC inc to ..." I guess it comes down to a metal shift in always describing things your company has achieved, instead of things you as an individual have done.

jacques_chester 14y ago
Lots of clients require you to say, in your contract, who will be working on a project. They will inquire after individuals.
- luke_s 14y ago
  Which is why our tender responses do include the resumes - just in an appendix at the back. The bit at the front, with screenshots and quotes from happy users just talks about what the company has done. You absolutely have to meet the customer requirements in your response. But its up to you where you place the emphasis :-)
koevet 14y ago
We are to small to even think of compete in one of the bids for a large company or the government. The majority of our engagements result from some kind of personal contact my partner or myself have in in our previous life as freelance consultants. Nevertheless, I see your point. It's just difficult to apply just yet. We also considered removing the "team" page from our site altogether and just discuss generically about the technologies and clients we have been working with. I did my homework and went through some marketing and web-marketing books. My catch is that for professional services companies - especially at the early stage, the "who are those guys" question is the first that springs to mind to a prospect and it would be suicidal to remove a reference to the admittedly impressive experience that we have accumulated along the years.
- luke_s 14y ago
  Hmmmm ... I've actually been going around meeting a lot of digital marketing agencies (I've been doing a bit of Android freelancing in my spare time). They all seem really interested in the bids I have been putting together at my day job, but don't feel they are in a position to be able to tender on projects like that. I wonder what knowledge/skils/experience they need to be able to bid at that level? It seems like something really valuable to be able to train a company in...
- timv 14y ago