
Going Solo, Successfully - kevinburke
https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/going-solo-successfully
======
faitswulff
Didn't expect this note at the end, but what a good move:

> Give back to the tools that make you successful - I give a percentage of my
> earnings every year to support software tools that help me do my job -
> iTerm2, Vim, Go, Postgres, Node.js, Python, nginx, various other open source
> projects.

------
gesman
Tip to save on lawyer:

Read contract yourself then get back to company and request to either remove
all one-sided clauses or make them equally two-sided.

Also - add clause stating that unless you paid in full and on time - all IP
belongs to you.

Most contracts try to pull the blanket one way.

Once done, _then_ call your lawyer with resulted paper.

Much less work for your lawyer to do.

~~~
karambahh
And to those who are afraid of all legal aspects, don't be, it's very similar
to debugging code.

Read a clause, test it with varying inputs, watch the output and so on.

I've actually had _fun_ working with my lawyer debugging/mine-sweeping
contracts. We tech people use very similar techniques.

Seriously, go for it, you'll see :)

~~~
cyberferret
I agree for the most part, but the trick is knowing _what_ the inputs are in
the first place. A software consultant may miss a critical primary input such
as WHO is actually signing the contract.

I've seen instances whereby a contract was signed between a colleague and his
client, but the signature was between him and the signing agent, and not the
company per se, so when the guy that contracted him suddenly left the company,
the contract was declared null and void even though it was halfway through. He
thought he signed with the company, but legally he only signed with the
representative as laid out in the preliminary parties clause.

Lawyers are trained to spot those gotchas, much as developers can spot "off by
one" errors in computer code instinctively.

~~~
karambahh
>Lawyers are trained to spot those gotchas, much as developers can spot "off
by one" errors in computer code instinctively.

That's absolutely true. The thought process is similar but we & they are
trained differently, I really like your analogy.

------
mariopt
> Don't charge by the hour

This is bad advice.

Charging for a full week will make you lose a lot of clients. In the case of
software development: The client never knows the full spec of the project and
you'll have weeks were 10 hours is enough. Charging for those extra 30 hours
is terrible deal for your client and he won't take it.

What you should be careful about is how much you charge per hour. You may set
different rates based on context like: for a full time project project you
charge X, for future maintaining (which is on demand ) you charge 1.5 times X.

Hourly also protects you agains scope creeping. Charging by the
week/project/milestones requires a near full specification and it's done at an
agency level where you've a team. I've been working hourly and I love it. You
can try to spec out any project as much as you can, in the end you can't
predict scope changes and/or unexpected problems: API is broken, missed an
important email, build system is failing for no obvious reason, server went
down, etc, etc.

You have to figure out when charging by the hour/week/month/milestones is
reasonable. Just because someone is making 120K a year in San Fran, doesn't
mean you've to make the same amount while freelancing. It heavily swings from
client to client.

~~~
rpeden
I believe you'll find that overall consensus on HN will strongly disagree with
you on this point.

Here's the post most people will direct you to for an explanation of why
you'll want to avoid hourly billing, and how to get to a place where you don't
need to bill hourly:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247615)

For what it's worth - all of the people I know who have been able to do
software-related consulting successfully over the long term don't bill hourly.
They'd actually agree with you that having a minimum billable period of a week
lots them lots of clients - but it lost them the clients that would try to
nickel and dime them to death and complain about every invoice no matter low
the hourly rate was.

It sounds like your experience has been different though, so I'm happy to hear
you've found something that works for you.

~~~
jacquesm
The HN consensus has simplified things in such a way that any shades of gray
are tossed out.

When you are just starting out charging by the hour and starting with small
stuff is fine. But your goal should be to transition to charging by the week
as soon as you can afford it, because you can't afford to charge by the hour
for your whole career.

Keep in mind that those that have 'arrived' tend to take their life experience
and then condense it down to bullet points without nuance, after all,
unqualified statements sound so much better than qualified ones. But it's all
about the balance and to get to charging by the week you may need to start by
charging by the hour.

Service > product > weekly rates > daily rates > hourly rates.

The further you are to the left the more money you'll make but you have to
start somewhere.

~~~
pasta
To add: you can even charge by the hour in blocks of 4 if you feel more like
it.

It will be the same as charging per half day, but it can help you and your
client to accept that charging daily will be the next step.

~~~
cubano
This is what I am currently doing...plus, since everyone loves a "deal", I
charge a slightly higher hourly rate then give away "one hour FREE" because we
all know that FREE is the most powerful word in marketing.

Basically, I figure out what I would be happy with for 5 hours for work and
then give them 4 hours plus one FREE hour for that amount.

This has the added benefit of nudging my hourly rate higher, since I always
have a hard time raising my rates.

------
Sapph
Something else if you're a freelance developer: In order to command a higher
rate and not just be hired as a code monkey to implement a predefined task, it
helps to position yourself as a consultant who can help the client discover
the best solutions to achieve their goals.

Example: instead of just agreeing to develop a client's website per their
initial specs, in your discovery call, find out what their goals for the
website are.

Let's say they want to use it to capture pre-orders for an upcoming product.
Based on this, you can propose a few ROI-positive solutions like integrating
payments with their email marketing platform to engage customers and bring
back cart abandoners, hosting a viral share giveaway, etc.

------
codazoda
Author, if you read this, skip Ally for business accounts. They do not allow
them and may freeze your account and hold your funds when they realize you're
using it for business.

Their great for personal accounts.

~~~
enobrev
I didn't know this was an issue. After some research, I found that this is
correct and not only do they not allow it but it seems they've shut accounts
without contacting the account holders first. Appreciate the heads up.

------
willart4food
> Make Sure Contracts Are Signed With the Company - The contracts you sign
> should be between the client you are working with and your company NOT
> between the client and you personally. Discuss this with your lawyer.

So simple, yet so many people fail to do so. They believe that since they are
incorporated they are protected.

~~~
andrewflnr
What does this even mean from a mechanical standpoint? What do you look for?

More importantly, where do you learn about all this low level mechanical
stuff? Business books and HN comments always assume you know how to do that
stuff. They don't teach it in school, at least for CS majors. (And yes, I took
the "law for everyday life" class at my school. It was basically at the same
theoretical level)

~~~
kevinburke
Usually the first sentence of the contract will describe the parties signing
it.

“This agreement is between Acme, Inc (the Company) and Kevin Burke
(Consultant)” is bad. The agreement should be between Acme Inc and whatever
the registered name of your company is. Similarly on the signature line you
sign as an agent of the company (CEO, Sole Member etc) the same way your
counterparty signs it.

------
ordinaryperson
Get a lawyer, review contracts, hire an accountant, register as a company...is
this really better than working a regular 9-5?

Sounds like the OP spends just as much time (if not more) doing paperwork,
meetings, phone calls and other assorted meta-work as programmers in Big Tech
Co, if not more.

Corporate America can be a drag, I get it. Annual reviews, backstabbing office
politics, the wrong people get promoted, loud open offices full of clowns that
prevent you from concentrating but from this write-up it doesn't sound like
going solo is any hassle-free Shangrila, either.

For a certain class of people they like the "freedom" and hey, more power to
you. By all means, enjoy the IC life. But I'd just as soon move to a different
company if I'm unhappy at my job and not deal with this Kafkaesque amount of
paperwork of being an independent consultant.

~~~
kevinburke
I am the OP and I spend far less actually... a few hours at the beginning of a
contract sure but the average contract is multiple months. All of the bills
are auto paid, I just need to choose the right card/account when I pay for
something. Invoices take about two minutes to generate using a free site
called “invoice-generator.com.” The accountant I would have hired anyway to do
my taxes. I don’t pay for the lawyer if I don’t use them.

I also get to skip doing phone screens, interviews, being oncall... I am
spending a lot more of my time focusing on product problems than I was as a
full time employee.

Also - this might be obvious but the goal is to make more than you made as a
full time employee or get more vacation time for the same amount per year not
merely tread water.

~~~
ordinaryperson
I'm glad to hear I'm wrong. I'm certainly not rooting for anyone to fail.

But a couple of things.

One, the higher you rise in responsibility the more likely your work is to be
meta-work. I saw your personal site and the services you're advertising, as
time goes on you'll be offering more business-like services because inevitably
that's what customers want.

Sadly most programmers have to choose between having the satisfaction of doing
IC work and having their salary plateau or transitioning into management
and/or biz dev consulting.

Second, it's hard to build equity as an independent. That is, if you work for
Facebook or Amazon or whoever for 5 years, that's a hard skill you can trade
in for a better job elsewhere, or at the very least your benefits start to
accrue higher and higher (e.g. at my Big Tech Co: discount off public stock
purchase).

How many 55 year old solo independent devs do you see out there in the wild?
I'm sure they exist but unless the have some very specific skill set (e.g.
COBOL programming for banks) it's hard to have a forever career as a
generalist IC.

But again, more power to you if you can make it work. I'm not criticizing the
lifestyle, only suggesting that it's not some peaceful freedom from BS that
we'd all want to imagine it to be.

~~~
jasonkester
_How many 55 year old solo independent devs do you see out there in the wild?_

Lots.

Quick question? Would you prefer to be a 55 year old salaried senior dev, or a
55 year old specialist consultant? Same answer if you're one of those two, but
currently between gigs and looking for work?

Being the "old guy" looking for a job is how you get discriminated against.
"Why is this guy on the market now?" "How many years does he have left?" "Is
he still any good?"

Being the "old guy" specialist consultant means you're going to be _really_
good at the thing they need to bring you in to do. You're also really
expensive, which just reinforces how good you must be. Nobody is going to hold
your lack of inexperience against you when they have a problem their kids
can't solve.

No need for the specialty to be Geriatric COBOL or FORTRAN either. A 55 year
old Javascript guy today might have 24 years experience in it, and can
certainly teach your front-end guys a few things about writing code that runs
in browsers.

So yeah, when the time comes, make sure you're either consulting or running
your own company.

~~~
ordinaryperson
Well there's no fact-based way to settle this debate, the evidence is all
anecdotal, but I see discrimination against older consultants every single
day.

Executives at Fortune 100 companies (in my experience) pick an agency speed,
price and 'sexiness' \-- I've never once heard them positively rate the age
and experience level of a solo developer. And I have never, ever seen a F100
co bring in an old guy to tutor front-end devs. I can't even imagine.

I would absolutely rather be the old guy at a big tech co but I wouldn't be a
solo developer, I'd be in management.

There's no question there's a path out there for solo devs in their 50s but is
it really all roses and rainbows like you say? Seems like the harder path to
me.

------
rl3
This is great. Also interesting would be a similar guide on scaling from a
one-person operation to a proper consultancy.

Personally I'm jealous of those who manage to found their own creative
consultancies. Especially ones that mix design/VFX/videography/software
talent, that focus primarily on things like interactive experiences or
commercials.

For example, the Windows 10 default background.[0]

There's numerous other equally neat examples, but the gist of it is that they
get to think up cool stuff and then sell that to their clients, who are
usually massive brands that can afford to pay big money.

Getting one of those off the ground is probably exceedingly difficult barring
deep industry experience and the connections to match, and even then I'm sure
it's hard.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL8BBOwupcI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL8BBOwupcI)

------
sqs
Sourcegraph CEO here. Kevin Burke (the author) worked with us at Sourcegraph
for some important projects in late 2018 (including helping to prepare a big
product release). It was a joy working with him. I’ve worked with a lot of
contractors and would love it if more people followed these guidelines.

~~~
vajrabum
This recommendation, solicited or not, is a very strong example of how to
market a consulting business. Sales for consulting businesses can be more than
half the trick to making it go and selling services requires credibility. Most
consulting businesses that I'm aware of start with one or a small number of
existing relationships with built-in credibility and usually the business is
started with at least one sale in pocket. When it's time to try and go beyond
your initial customers recommendations especially public ones from past happy
customers go a long way to establishing credibility and shortening the sales
cycle. So it pays double or more in the long run if you can establish
relationships with and take care of the directors, VPs and CEOs that you're
working for regardless of who the hiring manager is.

~~~
sqs
My recommendation was not solicited, for the record. I read HN, saw the
domain, recognized it was Kevin, and posted entirely on my own.

(I agree with your reply!)

------
mickael-kerjean
I'm in the same boat, with a pure technical background, I managed to tripled
my salary in 2 years, the job has become much more interesting and without all
the political noise. The hardest bit so far is the sales / pricing strategy.
For example, my biggest problematic this month is to figured out how much is
it realistic to charge a F500 to support & maintain a custom build solution
we've created: 5k/month, 10k/month, 15k/month (was sounding totally crazy to
me until some people told me their company charge that kind of money for
support)

~~~
mathattack
My experience has been to ask for a crazy amount (at least 50% more than you
think you can possibly achieve). This anchors them high. Agree to “meet in the
middle” and you will be better off than your starting point. Then deliver like
crazy until they think you’re underpaid.

------
drake01
I totally agree with Kevin where he says:

""" I started out charging a monthly rate that was close to my full time
salary / 12\. This is not a good idea because you have overhead that your
employer is no longer covering - health care probably the biggest one, you
don't have paid vacations, there may be unpaid downtime between contracts and
also companies might not pay you. """

When I started working remote 5 years back, I was just out of college and
didn't care about those things...

------
falsedan
I feel like this is standard stuff, especially coming from the UK and the huge
amount of contracting in that market. The real hard parts of independent
contracting (how much exact are market rates/how do I find & land leads for
contracts without an existing contact at the client) don’t seem to be
addressed.

------
temp1928384
I feel like going freelance/consulting is such as "figure it out on your own"
ordeal even though there are so many people who do it. Seems like there's
opportunity to help people who want to go freelance transition more easily.

I think a good analogy is hair salons that sell a seat you can rent as a
hairdresser...are there places where you can "pay" for leads/intros to clients
as part of a larger remote software consultancy?

~~~
photoguy112
You really don't have to figure out anything, it's all been written about many
times over and posted all over. The post is a good summary but lacks details.
I am a UX consultant, not a developer, I figured it out on my own (although
I'm sure there are things I am not aware of that perhaps I should research and
figure out further) but I probably didn't have to if I did some googling
around first.

The biggest thing that makes you successful as a consultant is thinking like a
business. You are not a person performing a service for the company (that
makes you a hire / an employee figuratively speaking), you are a business,
solving their business problem. When you think of yourself in this way and act
accordingly, then everything becomes easier - saying no to bullshit, billing
and collecting, charging way more.

I nodded my head when I read the point about increasing your rate for every
new client. People think charging more is being unfair, but this is just
business practice. You don't need to charge "your worth" whatever it may be.
There is a supply of a very particular thing, and a demand of a very
particular thing and the rate does not matter whatsoever when the return far
outweighs the costs. A million dollar product is worth exactly zero if it
cannot be produced and if you are the one to help see it through then you can
charge whatever you like, given the margins make sense. These days I find
myself increasing my rates for every new client. Sometimes, just for the heck
of it, when I have many leads, I'll double my already high rate to see what
happens ;)

------
pseudolus
It's an additional expense but I would add obtaining business liability
insurance to the list. It's not generally too expensive but can save you a
bundle in legal fees that you can't recoup even if you prevail in lawsuit.
Additionally, while a corporate structure should shield you from personal
liability, there's no guarantee that whoever is suing won't try and pierce the
corporate veil to get to the corporate principals - hence the benefit of
insurance.

------
ha470
This is so helpful- thanks for sharing! Also your own website is such a great
example of taking selling yourself as a consultant seriously. Congrats on all
the success here!

------
HumanDrivenDev
The biggest impediment for me would be finding clients. IME most programmers
dont meet a lot plant potential clients when they are maintaining internal
software. Even if they work for a consulting company, you can't use them due
to restraint of trade clauses.

So how would you get the first customers? I'm just some guy off the street, no
one is going bet money on me performing a function for their business.

~~~
kevinburke
Go to meetups, talk to colleagues who have quit your current company, try to
attend or speak at conferences, start a blog and post at the bottom that
you’re available for consulting...

There’s no rule that says you can’t pitch projects to people, if you think you
could help make a company better call them up and pitch them on it.

~~~
jamestimmins
If you don't mind sharing:

1\. What kind of meetups? I'm guessing developers are inclined to go to
developer meetups, but it seems unlikely that potential clients would be
there.

2\. How have you managed to get hired by technology companies as a consultant?
My clients are mostly folks that are non-technical and need someone to build
them custom software. I'd love to work with tech-focused companies but am not
sure how to find/pitch those opportunities.

~~~
kevinburke
Living in SF helps. I meet people at meetups, on Twitter, through Github, I
reach out to people I think are interesting...

You could try finding a company you’d want to work for and take one of their
engineers to work, or try to target companies that need your skill set. “Hi
you really need a Go client library - I can build that for you” etc.

~~~
jamestimmins
That's actually really helpful. It's tempting as a consultant to be reactive,
but these are a few ways of being proactive that I had not considered. Thanks!

------
morpheuskafka
One issue I see is that GitHub ToS prohibit a single natural person from
owning multiple GitHub free accounts, so you would have to pay for each one
which could get quite expensive. Of course, larger business will have their
own GitHub Enterprise or self-hosted Bitbucket/GitLab/etc that they can make
you an account on.

~~~
dboreham
We just maintain our own corporate git hosting account for clients who don't
have their own. Not a significant expense. Although we actually use bitbucket
rather than github for this.

------
alex_suzuki
Great read, thanks Kevin.

I blogged about this as well recently, might have one or two interesting
points for you: [https://blog.classycode.com/going-freelance-as-a-software-
en...](https://blog.classycode.com/going-freelance-as-a-software-engineer-
some-advice-13c4064c72ce)

------
jdmg718
Problem is, as a student I am trying to go freelance and start getting clients
by doing small projects. And I read articles like this one and I have so many
questions. I cannot pay for a lawyer or an accountant yet most of the people
recommend it, am I not going to be able to go solo if I don't have those kind
of securities?

~~~
uasm
> "Problem is, as a student I am trying to go freelance and start getting
> clients by doing small projects."

Is this more-or-less your first job straight out of school?

~~~
jdmg718
Nope, had a couple of jobs at uni as an iOS dev. Problem is I don't know how
to sell myself as a developer or look for jobs.

~~~
uasm
> "had a couple of jobs at uni as an iOS dev"

That's a great start, but what kind of jobs are we talking about here? I'm
asking because you might want to invest into building more experience before
breaking off on your own. I'm talking about possibly larger projects,
cooperating with other teams, driving products forward, working with
PMs/customer requirements and so on. One way to get there is to work at a
larger organization. People place value on experience.

~~~
jdmg718
I've been developing using Swift for three years and built several apps for
myself and published them. Those jobs were coding purely in Swift developing
apps from scratch and using frameworks I've never used and learning about them
(like AVFoundation), I think that's a great start and some basic experience.

~~~
alain94040
The tried and true approach to starting on your own is to land your first
customer by being the cheapest, use that as a reference, and charge serious
money once you have a track record that you can point to.

The alternative is to get a normal full-time job for a few years, build
credibility, then go on your own using the contacts you made at your employer.

~~~
uasm
> "The tried and true approach to starting on your own is to land your first
> customer by being the cheapest"

That's definitely worth trying. But please remember, that is exactly what in
an insurmountable amount of people is currently doing over at
UpWork/Fiverr/Freelancer.com. You need some kind of advantage over them - if
you want to nail your jobs and get paid a salary that can sustain you.

------
mancerayder
Dear Author, thanks for the write-up. Regarding "Market yourself"... You
mention websites and so forth. Is most of your marketing online or most of it
in networking events?

How do you deal with recruiters and LinkedIn recruiters - have you found a way
around these?

------
r3vo
Sort of on the same path right now. Biggest obstacle I'm running into is that
most of the work I'm finding is through recruiters, which of course means that
a chunk of the money goes to the recruiter before I receive it.

The rates are still decent, but I'm not working with enough of a financial
buffer to compensate for the downtime I'm having. I'm brand new at this though
and I expected this sort of difficulty curve to start out with.

On a side note, if you've got an Angular or react project you are working on
in the Atlanta area or remote and need some help, reach out to me :)

All of my contact info is on my site elarbee.io

~~~
kevinburke
Start contributing to Angular or React core, reach out to developers on the
team or conference sponsors, let them know you’re available for consulting,
put up a targeted “Angular.js consulting” page...

Every company you reach thru the recruiters, if you make a good impression on
the employees there tell them to reach out to you directly to hire you again
if they move on.

~~~
r3vo
Thanks for the response Kevin, great advice. I really enjoyed your post! I
hope to be as impressive a developer as you one day.

------
m_b
Funny reading here « going solo » but get a « lawyer », an « accountant »,
etc.

~~~
sudhirj
These are outsourcing jobs and it’s better than doing it yourself. And you
spend less time with them than your gym instructor or even your grocer or
building manager. They will save you a ton of time and money, though.

~~~
m_b
Oh, don't worry I'm convinced! I just find it strange calling this "going
solo", because the guy telling us this isn't.

------
dilyevsky
> Try to get as much of the contract as you can paid up front - I generally
> ask for half or more up front. If a company offers Net 30 ask if you can
> shorten it to Net 5 or 10 or submit your invoices in advance.

Anyone can suggest some good reading material on how to structure payment
tranches? Do people charge a retainer? If so what percentage? when the work
starts is it “pay as you go” or after completion? Does Net D apply to work
start or completion?

------
rasikjain
Great writeup Kevin. As a IC, I can relate some of these points with my
experiences.

You should charge more to compensate for Medical Insurance, Non billable hours
(Gap time), Marketing cost etc.

Setup a Company (LLC or S-Corp) for doing paper work and contract (buy a
minimum liability insurance). This will protect individual from litigations or
lawsuit.

Payment - Can't stress enough. I try to negotiate Net-15 or Net-30 days
payment. So far it worked with all the clients.

~~~
raverbashing
Just to clarify, Net-15 or Net-30 is payment 15 or 30 days after the invoice
date, correct?

~~~
rasikjain
That is correct. Payment term after you invoice date.

------
nathan_f77
This is really impressive! I'm especially impressed by the landing page for
his consulting site: [https://burke.services](https://burke.services) This is
so much better than just listing some of the technologies you've worked with.
It's really great to talk about the problems you've solved, and have some
customer testimonials (especially from big names.)

I've been doing almost the complete opposite for the last ~4 years. I always
charge by the hour, and I use a time tracking tool that tracks every minute. I
never ask anyone to pay up-front. I've used services like Toptal and Moonlight
that handle all of the billing for me. I've never talked to a lawyer or an
accountant. I haven't registered a company specifically for my freelancing,
but I've started doing everything through my startup's company. (My startup
now offers a SaaS product plus consulting services.) I live in Thailand and
have a work permit through Iglu [1], so they handle all of my invoicing and
taxes. I also don't have insurance. I don't set up separate GitHub accounts
for everything, and I don't really see the need for that. But I do usually
work for one client at a time, and I find context-switching very difficult.

I think the main reason I haven't taken my consulting work super seriously is
because I don't really want this to be my career. I've always treated it like
a part-time thing to just pay the bills while I work on my own startups.

No offense to people who take this seriously, but consulting has always felt
like a bit of a dead end. You can make a great living, but I get really
depressed when I enumerate all of the hours I would need to work. A salaried
position is nice because it hides these details. You come to work in the
morning, go home in the evening, and then your paycheck is transferred to your
bank account. You don't have the option to stop working at any time, so you
never really have to think about it.

When you're a freelancer who wants to do this as a career, you suddenly have
to convert your retirement goal into a fixed number of hours. Say you want to
save and invest $2 million before you stop working, and you earn something
like $200 per hour. You're able to save 50% of your income. You have to work
at least: ($2000000 / 200) * 2 = 20,000 hours.

That's 2,500 full days of work. Maybe you are able to book 80% of your time,
and you only work 5 days a week, so each year you can work: (52 * 5) * 0.8 =
208 days. It will take you 2500 / 208 = ~12 years of almost full-time work
before you can safely retire with $70k of investment income. Maybe more like
~9 years to account for investment returns.

I think I'd rather join a few early-stage startups and get some significant
stock options. It's much more fun to be part of a team member and have a
vested interest. It will still take an average of 10 years before most
startups have an exit. But you can leave after a few years and work for a few
different startups to diversify (or start your own.)

Having said all of that, I'm really impressed by
[https://burke.services](https://burke.services) and would love to hire him to
work on my startup in the future.

[1] [https://iglu.net/](https://iglu.net/)

~~~
photoguy112
Most startups don't have an exit, I believe most fail. So you could be sitting
at a failing startup and your options worthless.

~~~
nathan_f77
Yeah, but not all startups are created equal. Sometimes you can spot an
opportunity that is much more likely to succeed. Maybe the cofounders have
already had multiple exits, they’ve raised money from some very prestigious
investors, and they already have a very impressive list of customers who are
paying to use the product.

That’s not anywhere close to a couple of first-time entrepreneurs working on
“Facebook but on a blockchain.” But I think both of those startups are counted
when people talk about the high failure rate.

The statistics are quite different if you just look at YC companies:
[https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-YC-startups-
eventua...](https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-YC-startups-eventually-
close-down/answer/Pranav-Gokhale?ch=10&share=01c530d7&srid=37TL)

And even better if the cofounders have a wide network, a strong track record,
and an impressive product that people are already paying for.

Sure, startups are still extremely risky, including the ones with prestigious
cofounders and investors. But they can also pay quite well at the same time,
so it’s not like you’re working for free. A senior engineer at a well-funded
startup can still earn $150-180k, plus significant stock options.

I personally enjoy the risk and excitement and much prefer to work at early-
stage startups than FAANG companies, even I end up earning less. Working on my
own products is even more fun.

------
winrid
I worked with over 50 companies/clients before I was 20 doing software dev.

Not sure I'd write an article but open to questions!

~~~
aicioara
If you mean under 20 years old: how did you establish a reputation at such a
young age and in particular how did you get your first client?

Was 2nd client easier to get. How about the 50th?

~~~
winrid
1\. Yes under 20. I started when I was 17, partially spending the time in my
Compsi vocational class doing client work I had found on odesk(now upwork).

2\. First couple jobs I probably worked below minimum wage. Lots of foreign
competition on odesk that is hard to compete with no reputation. By the end I
was making 35/hr in an area where you can mortgage a house for $350/mo (why
did I move to the bay area again?? :))

3\. Yes they get easier to get. Part of my pitch was I get things done right
which people liked.

Edit - another fun fact about odesk. My first office job in the bay area was
literally across the sidewalk from them. I spent three years getting work
through there, moved 3000 miles, and ended up across the street from their
office. Neat right?

------
carlsborg
Is self employment on its own a worthy goal? I think it makes sense if it
enable or finances entrepreneurship. Building an enterprise, disrupting
existing business models, and adding value at scale is much more interesting
problem.

------
known
Worth the [https://archive.st/7fd6](https://archive.st/7fd6)

------
mcenedella
This is all very good advice.

------
171243
bookmarked for later

------
iceninenines
After about the first $50k, get yourself some quality umbrella IT insurance
that can protect you up to $4mil USD.

~~~
system2
Any why anyone would need to do that?

~~~
dboreham
Perhaps they own a house and don't want to lose it in a lawsuit? Also many
clients will require their vendors to have insurance. Insurance is a kind of
virially marketed product.

