1. Right now, almost all the clients that we acquire are through Upwork. We are a bit nervous about the risk of getting kicked from the platform in the future for any reason. Not that we are doing anything that violates their terms, but just in case. We don't want to be over-reliant on one channel. What are our alternatives? I know few other sites like Fiverr, Freelancer, etc., but supposedly they are not that great in comparison.
2. We are most certainly leaving money on the table because we cannot handle all the job requests we get. We want to grow our team, but hiring developers in the U.S is not an option, given the high wage demands. What country is most suitable for hiring some good developers at reasonable rates/wages and being compliant with U.S labor and tax laws at the same time?
3. What are some of the hot areas that we should build our expertise in besides mobile and web app development to expand our business?
4. How do we actively look for bigger companies that may be interested in offloading some of their work to a small team like ours? What are some efficient cold emailing strategies? Should we hire salespeople for that?
5. Is there a particular type of team structure or hierarchy that works well for services as opposed to in a product company? What roles should we prioritize in hiring?
6. Finally, Any tips on how to build web presence?
Thanks in advance for your inputs. HN community is incredible!
1.You must own your sells and communication channels. Depending on third party platform is non reliable.
2.Do your business math, there is always a risk factor in hiring/growing your team beforehand.
3.If I am in your place, I will focus on being the best at what you do now and care for expanding the business later.
4.The better strategy is to search for bigger projects that you can showcase in your portfolio.
5.Your team structure will change according to types of projects that you work on.
6.Nice portfolio with clear copy and SEO. Blogging on social media on relevant topics.
More insight that I can give:
Put customer relationships on the first line. Underpromise and overdeliver. Say no to clients without fear. Rase your rates accordingly.
I hope this helps. Good luck.
So, we all want “better” clients.
What does an ideal client look like to you and your team?
* Not a flip question.
Not trying to advise against it, just laying out the liability explanation that a lawyer told me.
Think about it the other way around - if you were a contractor for some business in Poland, it’s not like you would be worrying about being dragged into a Polish lawsuit in the same way as you are in the US.
- You can hire a remote contractor. E.g. in the Philippines or India. When your company grows you can setup a satellite office there. I think the important part is the long-term commitment because it would be costly to hire new contractor every 6-12 months to train and on-boarding process. Also make sure your working time has overlap for better communication.
> What are some of the hot areas that we should build our expertise in besides mobile and web app development to expand our business?
- I suggest you find a niche business and make it your own product. You can find ideas on your clients. In the long-term it is really exhausting and costly developing green field project every year.
a) What are your current clients getting you to do? If you are doing lots of cheap web dev projects, you might not be able to scale reliably since it is a crowded market, even though you can survive as a small company with a very small slice of the market. b) Are you able to specialise or otherwise increase the quality/size of your work to be more suited to people with more money who wil pay more for that better work? This will separate you from the crowd - there are plenty of people who can make a decent website template for $100 online but not many who can provide real expertise for that kind of money c) The type of work you do will dicatate who you need and what kind of company structure will work. If you can setup so that you have a larger number of less skilled/cheaper employees and a small number of people who can do the difficult bit then you can get good bandwidth. If you are a specialist, you might be better charging much more money and only employing a small number of really expert developers. d) Recruitment is a whole other book. It is hard to know someone's ability until you get them to work for you. Start with contract work with a view to permanent if they prove themselves with good communication, good work ethic, high quality work etc. e) In terms of locations, there is no trick to finding cheap good developers otherwise everyone would do it. Depending on your location (US?) Eastern Europe would probably be the best cultural fit for a reasonbale rate. South America, Vietnam, Thailand might be less cultural fit but a bit cheaper. Some other countries like India and Pakistan might be even cheaper but the cultural divide is wider and you might struggle more with communicating with each other.
Probably you do some of the above anyway, but rates for consultants are higher generally. I charge $100 to $200 an hour or $800 per day, and I haven't seen clients object much.
And as said earlier - get referrals. Many past clients will be glad to pass your name around, assuming you did a good job for them.
referrals, referrals, referrals. Always be asking if anyone knows anyone needing your help.
Also, consider productized consulting.
At the least, consider hosting, that can be a good way to make money while you sleep. Also makes you more of a one-stop shop, which can be appealing to clients.
Perhaps a good way to grow is to pivot into his idea of an efficiencier firm, and you may be in a unique position to do so. It means you take on partners instead of employees, and completely bypass the need for a management structure. A bit like a law firm, but the big challenge is of course to convince clients that it's worth paying you like they pay their lawyers, and not like code monkeys.
2. Reach out to your previous clients on Upwork and ask for referrals.
But by then you might have created a network of clients? Best way to grow your network is to ask your present client about who else in their network would like to give you work.
Platforms like Upwork are for bootstraping your consulting/contracting/freelancing business. But after that initial push, you have to use those initial customers to gain more customers. Platforms like Upwork do not help if you want to scale sustainably.
2. I understand you're in USA.
- By going into eastern europe, or Vietnam, or India you would not stop competing with Google and likes. Even when they do not have direct offices in the country, their suppliers do.
- in most hot tech hubs competition for talent is fierce.
- you would have a very hard time finding senior developers. they would typically not join an unknown company for a non-permanent position.
- it won't be easy to communicate; timezone is a major issue for communication.
- soft skills are very different from what you would expect from US.
- in the past year, it became extremely complicated to get a first job or step up, as everyone is now working remotely, and only want senior developers. There is very little competition for juniors. Try to build around your domain expertise so that if you can build a pipeline of more or less technologically similar work, so that you could employ a high numbers of junior to mid level personnel to do work according to your blueprints.
- tax wise, its easy: from USA perspective, you're tax witholding agent, and as such you just need collect W8-BEN (for individuals) and W8-BEN-E for corporations to establish that other party is not a US person / corporation, plus it establishes the tax withholding rate - for most countries USA has tax treaties with, its zero. The other party in principle should obtain ITIN (for individuals) or EIN (for corporations) and file a very simple annual return with IRS - but it's not your responsibility (and in reality, almost nobody does it, as there are no taxes to be refunded).
- labour law wise, your relationship with a remote contractor may be classified as employment based on certain criteria such as clocking particular hours a day within certain period, you provide an equipment, pay for internet etc; your exposure is really to the country where your contractor resides. You should structure your contract in such a way that it would not be deemed an employment contract and confirm your counter-party actually pays mandatory deductions in her country. This is a very low risk you shouldn't really worry about. Remember that prosecuting you would require international litigation, and you have to have hundreds of employees in a certain country to make it worth it.
- remember I'm not a lawyer, just speaking out of my past experience ;-)
3. Probably doing full-stack development is worth expanding to. Cloud migration from legacy apps is still a good business. Devops is #1 in unfilled positions I hear from some my former colleagues.
Note that service business gets most profits by employing large amounts of averagely paid personnel doing standardized jobs, not because you've got 5 ninjas you try to charge a fortune for.
4. Direct connections and regular business development. In-depth blogs, open source participation are known long-term strategies. Cold emails don't really work. At that stage, try to find a sales person who would work strictly commission-wise. Avoid "fractional sales persons" who would charge you few K/month (just like another 10 clients) and they would effectively just recycle their rolodex - you'll have many leads and meetings and but likely no contracts.
Use upwork as an absolute last resort. Find clients through word of mouth, referrals, social proof, networking, SEO, and maybe light ads and sponsorships. Only fall back to upwork if you can't fill your schedule otherwise.
Probably more importantly, change the type of client you're working for. People who use upwork and similar platforms are either uninformed, or intentionally looking for the cheapest work possible. You won't, as you put it, "grow your business" on that. Its possible for you to find some good clients there, but its much more rare and requires effort. So why not put that effort into finding clients who will pay you more?
Take the wins you've made on upwork, those clients who you did really good work for and really made happy, and ask them to refer you to other people, and engage those people off of upwork.
> We are most certainly leaving money on the table because we cannot handle all the job requests we get. We want to grow our team, but hiring developers in the U.S is not an option, given the high wage demands. What country is most suitable for hiring some good developers at reasonable rates/wages and being compliant with U.S labor and tax laws at the same time?
There's nothing wrong with hiring offshore people, but don't hire offshore people because you can't afford onshore people. You can't afford onshore people because you're way undercharging. Maybe that's your business model, but given you're asking about how to hire offshore people, I don't think it is. Raise your rates so that you can hire onshore people.
> What are some of the hot areas that we should build our expertise in besides mobile and web app development to expand our business?
You shouldn't chase hot areas, you should pick something that has longevity and dive into it. Okay maybe that means you can pick something hot and fresh today. But if you're always picking something hot and fresh every few months, you're not getting REALLY GOOD at one thing. Trying to go all in on something like blockchain or whatever means you need to now figure out how to build up your blockchain sales pipeline. Where would you even go for that kind of work? If you don't know the answer to something like that, then devoting time to getting good there is actually a negative EV for your business.
Once you position yourself as a specialist, raise your rates.
> How do we actively look for bigger companies that may be interested in offloading some of their work to a small team like ours? What are some efficient cold emailing strategies? Should we hire salespeople for that?
Do good work for smaller companies, and ask them for word of mouth referrals. You'll get intros to bigger companies, eventually.
> Is there a particular type of team structure or hierarchy that works well for services as opposed to in a product company? What roles should we prioritize in hiring?
This depends a bit too much on where your problems lie and what you're doing w/ your business IMO. At least, when your company is young. There's no one correct answer here. Fill in your skills gap and then hire to address your needs. But based on the rest of your post, I'd guess you need help with bizdev/sales.
> Finally, Any tips on how to build web presence?
IMO web presences for dev shops who truly want to succeed early on should be localized. Pick a city or geographic region (hopefully where you are already located) and a specialty and SEO the hell out of it. You won't stand out in a global marketplace, but you can stand out for local businesses looking for local help. And there are usually a lot of them.