HACKER Q&A
📣 gofer777

How to get clients for a new, small software agency?


I have a good team (two backends, one frontend, one devops, one PO / PM) that have been working together for 5 years. Due to changes in the company, we lose our jobs and we want to jointly develop projects for others. How to start without experience in acquiring customers? I don't know if it matters, but we work in Europe.


  👤 karaterobot Accepted Answer ✓
The most typical way to get started is to use personal connections you have: someone's cousin's brother-in-law is VP at some company, they put in a good word for you, that kind of thing. Or, leverage some connection you have to the previous companies you've worked in, or to former coworkers who've left to go somewhere else, and are in a position to hire contractors.

You can also respond to job listings looking for contractors, and tell the recruiter that you've got a team that could work together. Sometimes that works.

I did agency consulting for 13 years, it is a constant hustle but can be a lot of fun.

Remember to always be looking for the next contract while working on the last one: make friends at the company, connect on LinkedIn. Don't be afraid to sell yourself, in fact nobody else is going to do it for you. You need an extravert on staff, or an introvert who can fake it (that can be even better).

Unsolicited advice: specialize at all costs. The more you can say things like (just an example here) "we are the experts at building typescript applications for SMB retail SaaS companies", the more likely you are to get hired, compared to the company who says "yeah we'll do anything for money". You want the person in charge to be able to look at your track record and say "these guys are a safe bet, because they've done this exact thing before."


👤 zefiroi
I'm on your same journey.

If it may help, I'm based in the UK and mainly in the contractor market. I've got a very good team across the stack and we specialize in cross-platform mobile apps (mainly React-Native).

In my experience having a strong tech rep with actual development background goes a long way. I find most of my clients through Linkedin and handle the sales myself, then organize the work with my team that I've built over the years.

Happy to share more detail and get to know fellow hackers' experiences.

P.s. been lurking for a long time and this is my first comment! Amazing community


👤 hbcondo714
I had a good experience using a team from Digital Knights[1]. Your team could apply as one the teams they use with their clients.

[1] https://www.digitalknights.co/


👤 chrisrickard
Friends and family! Take a look at https://www.devtoagency.com, especially the article https://www.devtoagency.com/referrals-from-friends-and-famil...

👤 davidajackson
Do you specialize? Instead of casting a wide net, I'd suggest becoming an expert in just a few small areas. Then, you can cold outreach to companies/people with those needs. Like an expert on Kubernetes, or React, whatever...

👤 roneoo
The book "Design is a job" by Mike Montero provides precious advice, useful for designer and other members of a web agency

👤 lagrange77
Maybe attend some startup/tech conferences. Oftentimes, even launched startups are still looking for someone to implement their ideas.

👤 gofer777
Thank you very much for your comments.

👤 readonthegoapp
you got a website? rates? specialties?