[LRUG] Switching from solo contractor to being a development company

[Nick Tabernacle]

Also of interest to me, I'm often to be found in various Pret coffee shops
around the capital when I need to get out of the home office!

 

As handy as things like Odesk are, I often find the amount of time bringing
someone in places like India up to speed on projects takes too long. To
actually sit with someone in london who can do work on a informal basis and
run through it together at the same screen would be great. 

 

To Luke:

 

I would say 80% of our work actually comes from word of mouth and meeting
clients through clients etc..



 

From: chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org [mailto:chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org] On
Behalf Of luke saunders
Sent: 16 February 2012 13:54
To: London Ruby Users Group
Subject: Re: [LRUG] Switching from solo contractor to being a development
company

 

Hi Jonathon,

 

This would definitely be of interest to me. Let's keep in touch over the
next few weeks as what I'm doing after this contract ends becomes clearer.

 

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 1:06 PM, Jonathon Horsman <jonathon at arctickiwi.com>
wrote:

Hi Luke

 

I'm in a similar situation where I work on several short to medium term
projects for several clients, operating under a company.

 

I seem to be getting more and more work now but am a bit scared to take on
staff in case all the work dries up suddenly. Also the prospect of employing
someone seems a bit daunting.

 

This might be a bit tangental to what you were asking about, but partnering
with other developer(s) on an informal basis seems very appealing, if there
could be easy resource sharing for overflow work.

 

Ideally working in a shared office space with a few freelance developer
types with potentially design resource onsite and a shared meeting space.

This would facilitate collaboration on bigger shared projects and also solve
the problem of holiday cover and pitching to clients concerned with lack of
coverage.

 

Eventually this could evolve into a formal arrangement or having everyone
operating under an umbrella company.

 

Thoughts?

 

On 16 February 2012 12:29, luke saunders <luke.saunders at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

For several years now I've been a contract developer, usually working
for a single client at any one time and often for a couple of years at
a time. Sometimes I get projects which are short term to fill some
specific requirement, like now I'm redeveloping a site, which will be
done by May. I think I'm a pretty typical contract developer.

At some point I would quite like to run a development company, which
might handle several projects at a time, employ other developers etc.
But it's not clear how to best approach making the leap, when I am
employed by clients they usually want to employ me and only me, if
they need other developers or a designer they'll find them themselves.
So probably the companies I have relations with now would not be my
target market then.

Has anyone made the jump from solo contractor to development company?
And if so do you have any advice on how to achieve this? How do
clients find you and do you have a lead gen / sales process?

Thanks,
Luke.

_______________________________________________
Chat mailing list
Chat at lists.lrug.org
http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org





 

-- 
Jonathon Horsman
Director - Arctic Kiwi
Mobile: 079 42366038 <tel:079%2042366038> 
Web:  <http://www.arctickiwi.com> http://www.arctickiwi.com

Twitter:  <http://www.twitter.com/arctickiwi>
http://www.twitter.com/jhorsman


 


_______________________________________________
Chat mailing list
Chat at lists.lrug.org
http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.lrug.org/pipermail/chat-lrug.org/attachments/20120216/186aba3b/attachment.html>