
Ask HN: Take a web development company to the “next level” or do something else? - bugaboo
OK so what do you do to go from being a self employed web developer to running a profitable web business?<p>I&#x27;ve been building websites and web applications for various clients over the last 10 years. Things usually go pretty well but there are still feast &#x2F; famine cycles. Each client gets their own custom proposal - though most small business web solutions seem to end up being a WordPress blog with some customizations. I&#x27;m happy to have the work but this is getting old and it seems like something needs to change.<p>The amount of information about how to run a profitable business is overwhelming. Everyone seems to be selling a class with their &quot;best way&quot; to grow from a web business to selling products (saas or ebooks or web based schools &#x2F; classes or productized consulting and on and on...).<p>I have built a few failed saas web apps and one that has a single customer... In addition to experience solving a variety of business problems, dealing with customers, selling hosting, etc.<p>Right now it feels like I&#x27;m just floating along and things just work out. I&#x27;d like to take more control and define some goals to move into being a product &#x2F; saas based business...<p>It seems odd &#x2F; empty to say that without more specific objectives but at this point I&#x27;m unsure if I should focus on building another web app, work on writing and creating educational material, keep doing web consulting and raise my rates or move on to doing something completely different.<p>I imagine others have been through similar situation s before... Any thoughts or suggestions?
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brudgers
Though there are outliers that produce successful products (37signals being
the most famous), a web development company is going to scale linearly by
adding staff and client projects and seeing revenue growth based on stable
margins over stable unit costs. This means that the "next levels" are going to
be bigger versions of previous levels not quantum leaps.

There's nothing wrong with that strategy. It just means that the business
grows horizontally and the role of an owner/manager will tend to shift from
production to administration and sales and human resources.

The quantum shift into a company based on producing and selling a product can
be abstracted as starting a new company (it may help to keep in mind that
there's nothing that prevents a person from owning two or more companies).
Maybe the consulting sustains the owner while they develop the second company.

Random advice from the internet: It's not going to be appreciably less work
growing one kind of company over the other. It's probably harder to get
reasonable initial success as a product company versus a consultant. It's
going to be hard to be successful at both.

Good luck.

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bugaboo
Thanks - that helps put things in perspective.

Yes ideally my goal is a product business weather it is under my current
entity or a new one. Consulting work will fund and support those projects
until they can sustain themselves. I'm not looking to hire employees and turn
into an agency though would like to get "more professional" and simplify the
consulting business.

I'm probably answering my own question after re-reading it... I should just
try some of these classes and see what works.

Thanks again!

~~~
brudgers
I'm not sure that a class is necessarily the place to start or that expending
capital on courses is the best allocation of resources. There is a lot of
sound advice available as open source. Even Sam Altman has some:
[http://playbook.samaltman.com/](http://playbook.samaltman.com/)

~~~
bugaboo
Yes this is helpful and inspiring.

Thanks for the link - I hadn't seen this resource before!

