

Ask HN: How does a 3 man consultancy land projects, not just contracts? - Tarks

The short version is : We&#x27;re in a situation where we have no problem landing short term contracts, but are having trouble finding a project that will let us scale, ideally we&#x27;d like to have a revenue stream that lets us dedicate a good portion of our time to building a product.<p>I&#x27;m sure a bunch of you have been in similar situations and I&#x27;d love to know what else we could be doing to move to the next level, in addition to trying to leverage our network (which is good for short term projects but not larger ones) currently we&#x27;re:<p>Building useful things and releasing them for free : https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;trello-card-dependencies&#x2F;ddhnhdoghhfoeceiohphmjkcemlkkock
Lecturing at local universities
Sponsoring and organizing a local meetup
Talking to people who have done this<p>This is an extension of the last point, I&#x27;d like to hear from anyone that has insight. I can&#x27;t find a sort of job board but for small contracts of this type, is there a name for agencies that would know of these types of engagements etc?<p>Thanks in advance !
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idsmct
I'm going to assume web consultancy here.

The main influence on the kind of contracts you can get is the way you market
yourself.

Don't market yourself as a 3 man team, market yourself just as a consultancy,
don't explicitly state the size. Have a nice portfolio and people will just
see what they want to. If you can complete the work asked for then I wouldn't
see this as an issue, although some people would.

Some good contracts to start with (at least in the UK), are small government
tenders. I don't know where you're from or what the system is like there.

Also try target more upmarket clientele. Law firms etc. Instead of charging a
large fee for the work, charge a smaller fee but have a recurring monthly
support cost. If they want the site updated do that, if they have some small
feature to add, add it (within reason, some clients will try take advantage of
this).

~~~
Tarks
You sound like you've actually done this and yes we're in the UK (London), my
email is in my profile so if you're interested I'd like to chat with you

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lifeisstillgood
Sorry, this is a long rant ... and I dont really have time to finish it but
thank you for sparking things...

I am in a similar position, (although the "no problem getting contracts" is a
bit of stretch), a few miles south of you in Kent.

I have a vision, of an eco-system of small independant Open Source developers
building, integrating and supporting local and central government software.
(Yes, government)

I have a tiny campaign site at www.oss4gov.org/manifesto and there is a
community of OSS developers but the love they get from the billion dollar
government market is tiny.

Why .gov? I do not want to write another website for some marketing agency, I
want to write actual software, and I want to write software that has an actual
impact on my community.

For example, West Lothian wants an "Election Management System" (#). This is
basically to take the poll register and do everything from orgnise rotas of
poll-helpers, send out the voting cards, and so forth. Its pretty boring I
suspect but it is clearly something that only governments need. Is there an
Open Source version? Not that I can find. Is it possible to persuade West
Lothian to pay for the development - well I am trying but they state right up
front - must already be in use in another council, tried and tested. THis is
for software that runs _elections_ \- what the hell are proprietary software
companies doing in there? If any code should be public and open it is code
that runs elections.

There are thousands of government services that have no or terrible IT, that
do not interoperate and yet GDS states that the government _prefers_ OSS, that
GCloud is for open, small businesses. The rhetoric is good, the reality of
risk-averse tenders is much much different.

Somewhere along the line we can see governments stop pouring our money into
proprietary code that only serves public uses and start seeing small local
consultancies, feeding on a eco-system of open source code and delivering
great custom services to government that just keep getting better, for a
decent living wage. (well hopefully better than that)

Bugger it, I am going to release my best shot at an election management
system, and force it into the cracks. There is a lot of money and a lot of
worthwhile projects behind that wall. Despite the 30% cut in services.

It is a project with real possibilities

\- International elections ([http://aceproject.org/today/feature-
articles/open-source-sof...](http://aceproject.org/today/feature-
articles/open-source-software-and-the-electoral-assistance))

\- There are organisations doing _something_ like this
([http://blog.openelections.net/](http://blog.openelections.net/))

(#)
[http://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/search/show/Search...](http://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=MAR170132)

