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Comment by pryelluw | Hacker News Reader

1. What industry are you after? You have to choose a vertical or you'll waste a lot of time being everything to everybody.

2. What technology service are you offering?

3. Knowing #1 and #2: Network with business people (not tech people) in events. Business people are the stakeholders, not some engineer that works at the company.

4. Your sales cycle could very well last over a year. Do you have enough funds to cover that?

5. Read this recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19876825

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1. I haven't picked an industry. I've been working with a startup in adtech and the other a significant player in the digital content provider space. Do you most clients expect extensive experience in their domains?

2. As for service, my technical focus is on all things backend, but also advise my clients on best practices at all phases of development. I want to eventually build a team to cover the full stack and QA.

3. Very good points and advice.

4. I currently work on these contracts. One of which should carry me through the year, but I don't have the cash to float myself for any longer than 3 months. I expected to work near full time while I work on sales. Also I don't know much about sales. Any content I should be reading?

5. Thanks I'll take a look.

1. No, but it helps to know their industry. It really sets you apart.

2. All things backend using what technologies? (language, databses, frameworks etc)

I can't name it all but here's the main stuff...

Languages: Java, Scala, Python 2&3, Javascript/ES6/Typescript

Libraries/Frameworks/Middleware: Spring, Java EE, Spark, Flask, Pandas, Pyspark, Node, Kafka, Redis, Memcached

Databases: The popular SQL dbs (SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, MySQL) and NoSQL (Cassandra and Mongo).

I also have alot of experience with Azure and AWS offerings, including serverless.

That's quite a list of technologies for one person to sell. Narrow it down to the most in demand and market those. Only do the rest as a value added service.

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