4 ms·

"But does demand for software projects actually fall off a cliff between the 20k and 100k price point?" Having worked in software consulting for a long while,

"But does demand for software projects actually fall off a cliff between the 20k and 100k price point?" Having worked in software consulting for a long while, my sense is that generally 50K clients are going to have all the hoops to jump through of the 100K+ clients, but without the margins required to make them profitable, accounting for the sales time.

zacharycohn 12y ago
Came here to say this. I love the idea, but as someone who runs a consultancy... There is a minimum threshold of dollars a project needs to be for me to consider it. Not because I run a Deloitte, but because: A) closing a small project is close to the same amount of work as closing a big project. B) you'd need to be closing, and finishing, $20k projects at a pace of one every two weeks to support OP's hypothetical team. If you can do this, 1) teach me, 2) start closing $50k deals. Also, there seems like an unbalanced payout. Developer gets $/hours worked. But as management, I'm still working hourly to bring in these $20k projects? If I manage to unlock the secret to closing a deal every two weeks, I'm either working a HUGE.amount (eating up a lot of the money I'm bringing in), or I'm barely working at all (classic problem with hourly billing - I get paid less because I'm good at my job). Also, watch out for overhead costs. As a two person consultancy, I am constantly amazed at how expensive it is to run a business.
- j4pe 12y ago
  Had a similar conversation with the guy who runs Raizlabs, and an original member of Pivotal, over the last few weeks. I definitely concede that there's a reason the market looks the way it does, and that it's not economically feasible to run a consultancy on gigs below a certain threshold, whether you're shelling out for Aeron chairs and massages or no. We do call it a consultancy, and some clients certainly come in that centralized way, but it's also a resource for freelancers. Freelancers already have their own dealflow. We want to enable them to do more my offloading to folks they trust, not make them into de facto employees of some management team. That team is as small as it can be to keep things running, and in addition to hourly rates it's supported by the same commission that any job referrer would get for bringing in jobs. For example, management right now consists mostly of me. Most of my income comes from coding on projects. But if a new job comes in through 'official' co-op channels managed by me, and I spend time screening & onboarding the client, I bill the co-op for that time. With no office, no fulltime employees, and nobody who doesn't have billable hours, there's not a lot of overhead to worry about. The trick is keeping client experience and quality high while doing that, which isn't too terribly hard when you only have experienced, successful freelancers on board.

zacharycohn 12y ago

Came here to say this. I love the idea, but as someone who runs a consultancy... There is a minimum threshold of dollars a project needs to be for me to consider it. Not because I run a Deloitte, but because: A) closing a small project is close to the same amount of work as closing a big project. B) you'd need to be closing, and finishing, $20k projects at a pace of one every two weeks to support OP's hypothetical team. If you can do this, 1) teach me, 2) start closing $50k deals. Also, there seems like an unbalanced payout. Developer gets $/hours worked. But as management, I'm still working hourly to bring in these $20k projects? If I manage to unlock the secret to closing a deal every two weeks, I'm either working a HUGE.amount (eating up a lot of the money I'm bringing in), or I'm barely working at all (classic problem with hourly billing - I get paid less because I'm good at my job). Also, watch out for overhead costs. As a two person consultancy, I am constantly amazed at how expensive it is to run a business.

j4pe 12y ago
Had a similar conversation with the guy who runs Raizlabs, and an original member of Pivotal, over the last few weeks. I definitely concede that there's a reason the market looks the way it does, and that it's not economically feasible to run a consultancy on gigs below a certain threshold, whether you're shelling out for Aeron chairs and massages or no. We do call it a consultancy, and some clients certainly come in that centralized way, but it's also a resource for freelancers. Freelancers already have their own dealflow. We want to enable them to do more my offloading to folks they trust, not make them into de facto employees of some management team. That team is as small as it can be to keep things running, and in addition to hourly rates it's supported by the same commission that any job referrer would get for bringing in jobs. For example, management right now consists mostly of me. Most of my income comes from coding on projects. But if a new job comes in through 'official' co-op channels managed by me, and I spend time screening & onboarding the client, I bill the co-op for that time. With no office, no fulltime employees, and nobody who doesn't have billable hours, there's not a lot of overhead to worry about. The trick is keeping client experience and quality high while doing that, which isn't too terribly hard when you only have experienced, successful freelancers on board.