Ask HN: How do I get into consulting? - ma2rten
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k__
What do you wanna consult about?

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ma2rten
Machine Learning.

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k__
Okay, so more technical stuff like I do.

Well, I don't know what the formal requirements in your country are, but
project-wise, I just looked on the Web.

Got a 2-year project via AngelList.

I just signed up to many freelance project websites and wrote applications
like no tomorrow, when I started.

I didn't have many expenses back then and could live for a year from 4-6
months of work, so I only needed a few of the projects to work out, but I also
only went for greenfield projects that would go for at least 3months and I
would only bill per month or week, so I wouldn't get caught up in hourly
billing formalities (what did I do today) etc.

If you're lucky, the customers will follow up with new stuff.

The next thing I did was content marketing.

I started with blog-articles, did some GitHub tutorials and finally some
videos.

I wrote 2-4 articles per month for two years or so, but someday I got requests
from people coming in. A publisher wanting to write a book and a startup
wanting to do developer relation stuff for them.

So get on a well-known blogging platform and Twitter, and write about machine
learning. There are more beginners than pros so even the basic stuff will get
you recognition. But don't hope for quick wins here. For the first year, I
just used my articles and GitHub repositories as "portfolio" to get some
projects and they didn't have much value in themselves.

This is just how I did it.

Know a bunch of people who got a fine spot as a free consultant at a big corp
rather quickly and never had to do any legwork after that. So your mileage may
vary :)

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eitland
Where do you live?

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ma2rten
Bay Area.

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eitland
Ok, asked just in case you were in Scandinavia.

Good luck!

