

Ask HN: Anyone interested in working for clients, not just building startups? - twelvedigits

The prospect of building an app, or a startup, from the ground up is intriguing and incredibly sexy.  Your photo in Fast Company, your name written all over HN, the chance for TechCrunch to blog about you and spike your traffic for a day<p>I've done it, I'm in the middle of it, and it's fun but it's very tough.  And I say this as the business/strategy half of a startup tht hasn't yet failed (www.youintern.com).  It's been incredibly challenging.<p>I do this while working full-time in advertising and have for a year now considered trying to combine my skills and network with a talented programmer to try and create a service agency -- a company that builds tangible solutions, small or large, for all manner of clients.<p>Advantages would be that there's more direct money up-front, conceivable ends of every project, the challenge to keep working on new ones, and the prospect of acquiring new business regularly.<p>Starting the next boxee is exciting and inherently risky.  Why do programmers so rarely consider using their talents for more immediate gains?  Why the assumption that a startup is destined to become a 20-person hot shop with a cool office and news articles, but a "digital agency" could not?<p>I'd love to discuss this with anyone in NYC: chaparian at gmail dot com
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billroberts
Services-based companies are of course a well-established and perfectly
respectable type of business, but a very different kind of business to a
product company. I worked in a service business for many years and it has good
and bad points. It's less risky, because in general you don't do any work
unless you know you are going to get paid for it, whereas with a product you
have to do lots of development and marketing before you really find out
whether your product will sell or not.

You do get lots of variety, but on the other hand you don't get so much choice
or control of what you are working on.

A successful product business can be more successful (in terms of profit) than
a service business. Because if lots of people like your product you sell a lot
of it, with very little marginal cost of production.

For a services business to make _a lot_ of money, then you need to have a lot
of staff. Then you need an HR department and middle managers and procedures
and a dress code and before you know it you're a pointy-haired boss :-) And
then making sure all those mouths remain fed is a tough task for the sales
team. If you are short of work, you have to keep paying the salaries and you
can lose money really quickly, whereas in good, busy times, the profits you
can make are capped by the number of people and acceptable charge rates.

Of course you don't need to try to get big - you could set up a small service
business and keep yourself in a pretty good lifestyle, without trying to
become the next Accenture.

My choice to go for a product style company was mainly because of the creative
aspects of it - I wanted to be able to decide myself what would go into the
software, rather than having to develop someone else's idea of a product all
the time.

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twelvedigits
Interesting points. My issue is with your contention that as a service
company, you don't decide what goes into the software. This is where a web
production/service agency can learn from the creative industry.

Such a service agency should position itself as an industry expert, one that
clients turn to for solutions, not products. That is, if a client -- let's
say, a chain of local gyms -- comes to you and needs a website built, it
shouldn't be turnkey and you should expect to contribute your thinking to the
end product, not just the code that creates that.

Not code monkeys. Inform and shape the final product, because you know more
than your client. They need you for a reason. They don't know the best answer,
you do. That's why they hired you.

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billroberts
You're absolutely right that that's how it ought to work. And when you have a
good relationship with your clients you can sometimes get close to that. In
practice it won't always work like that, but you can try to pick and choose
your assignments and 'train' your clients to move in that direction.

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jlees
I think a lot of the 'stigma' if you can call it that about consultancy and
agencying is the perceived effort to reward ratio.

Startup? Put in some effort, create something awesome, become billionaire and
retire to beach with daiquiri.

Consulting/agency? Have to put in graft every day for clients to keep the
thing going. No big cash out, no ultimate win, constant pedal power. Maybe the
odd holiday to the Bahamas.

I'm not saying this is _true_ , mind. But it's definitely the 'divide' I've
seen and heard between the two options when talking to other entrepreneurs.

On the flipside some of us love building stuff to our own specification and
not other people's. The previous points in this thread about choosing what you
work on can make or break the idea, really.

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hotshothenry
I do both. I'm currently developing my own startup thing on the side, working
full time as a web developer, and doing web development/design work for
clients

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twelvedigits
An argument that I'd expect to hear is, "my startup work is more personally
fulfilling."

Do you find this to be true? If yes, do you think this is because of the
clients that you work with?

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hotshothenry
I definitely find this to be true, I think it's more to do with the fact that
you're working for yourself and setting your own guidelines rather then having
set hours or a strict set of tasks to do at a regular job.

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noodle
why does someone _just_ have to build startups? i do both. actually, i do all
3 -- i have a full-time job, work for clients freelance-style, and spend time
working on personal startups when i manage to come up with an idea worth
executing on.

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twelvedigits
Nobody has to, it just dominates the discussion on this forum.

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noodle
because thats what the forum is about? :)

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yan
Emailed.

