Ask HN: How do I find a team of 10-15 developers a project to work on?

I have been in your shoes and it is how I started 2 consulting companies now. We lost a number of people to two different product acquisitions and then gained a few etc. Always a bit of an ebb and flow, but it has generally worked well for me since 1999. BTW I am also in Florida.

It sounds to me as if you are missing the key ingredient to the mix, you need marketing and business management/development of some sort. My bet is the team as a whole has a good sized network to pull from, you just may lack the experience and knowledge of using it to get deal flow.

Not that you asked, but for 10-15 guys, you need significant project flow to keep everyone employed and happy at fair wages. It will equate to a bare minimum of $140k or so per month in revenue, personally, I'd be more comfortable near $200-210k as a minimum target for the whole team. If you assume you take minimum agreements of $30k or so, you need roughly 5-7 new deals a month to keep cash flow moving or work towards getting larger deals but those generally take time. Additionally you have to see how the mix of your team fits projects to see how that would work, e.g. you may have to support a devops (just an example) person for a few months when there is little devops work coming through.

If you want to chat I am in Central Florida too, happy to met up or chat via email etc. We may have some complementary skills that would benefit both our teams.

It has usually taken the form of 1-3 large contracts but from time to time we pick up smaller stuff. I would love to get together sometime if you would like, I am always down for networking and it's easy to talk me into lunch. My contact info is in my profile, feel free to ping me and we can set something up. I can probably twist Hung's arm into a meal as well.

I'd like to point out that if you want to head up the business development or increase your skillset enough to get the ball rolling for solidifying your team, you need to be more aggressive with your networking.

davismwfl lists his email in his profile and gave you an open invitation to talk with him and especially soak up the knowledge that he has gained from starting two consulting companies. In an instance like that, you want to be the one contacting him, sussing out his schedule, giving him a few options for when you could possibly meet, and following up with him consistently when you get radio silence.

This is not meant to be an attack on your approach, but I read your response as extremely passive (easy to talk me into lunch, probably twist Hung's arm), and an aggressive approach where you actively engage an interested party is what will lead you to succeed in that role.

I understand that taking on that role might not be your forte, so you might be reluctant in fully embracing it. How I would approach it is by attacking the problem head on so you don't have to bring in a business development person who is a complete unknown within your group, and just trusting them to get the job done. Go to local meetup groups, and maybe even meetups within a 2+ hour radius. Troll craigslist for potential clients nationwide. Maybe even line up a couple projects with a freelancing website just to get the ball rolling -- projects that make economic sense (being able to complete a project with 2-5 of your man-hours for 500-1000 dollars).

You are correct, honestly Hung and I have played hot potato with the role and I don't think either of us truly want the role. I first fell into it and then as of late Hung has been more at the forefront but yes your perception is spot on, neither of us are totally comfortable in the role. Hence the constant talk about hiring for the position, but the reality is Hung and I pitch well when we are in the door because we are technologist, we tried an arrangement with a recruiter a while back and came to the conclusion that he just could not pitch the technology at the level we can. But we deal at a very technical to technical level, when we pitch to people that understand technology we always walk away with a contract. When we pitch to people who do not have technical staff we get locked into a rut where they are afraid to commit. We do not seem to have the sales skills to move non-technical individuals out of this rut, we don't know how to break out of this. I know it is due to not having the right sales skills on the team, but we tried an individual with strong closing skills but light on technical and that did not work out well.

I think you can make up the difference when you are pitching to non-technologists by bridging your current gap in your pitch with research on the company you are pitching to. What I would do in that instance is get a feel for their product and what their market is, and in the pitch relate everything to graphs of what their trajectory might look like and what their trajectory could be using your technology. Show the curve of their current growth and a curve that breaks up much sooner which represents what their growth rate could be. Back that up with data and solutions about how you're going to increase their revenue.

I think what impresses non-technologists the most is if you have a full and utter grasp of their business, not just their product offerings. You can show great prescience if you can thoroughly research their products and say things like "I bet your customers have said that they wish they had x feature", or "Have you considered y alternate method to monetizing your core product?". Chances are, all the ideas you toss out they will have thought of, but it will show that you're in the business of helping them get to business solutions and not just build them some cool software. This will make them feel like you're on their team, and greatly increase the chance of landing a contract.

Consequently, if you find this part to be difficult (extracting the core business that someone is in from their product offerings) then it becomes more and more difficult to pitch technology solutions, since you're basically missing the whole point of their company and just attacking their pain points from the outside->in. Whoever is in the role of gathering contracts should be able to direct all of your technological forces into a business solutions package, instead of a technological solutions package.

bazillion hit on a couple of things I totally agree with.

One of the things I do is troll Craigslist off and on. We have a contract right now valued around $90k from a single phone call to a poorly written craigslist ad that I reached out to. Not bad for literally about 30 minutes of a phone call and 90 minutes of discussions and negotiations.

No one will represent you the way you can if you are willing to learn some skills, but sometimes you need the outside help. However, a little mentoring/guidance can go a long way if you are willing.

In the end work will not find you guys until you have a niche and decent reputation, and even then people who say they never look for clients I think are not being totally honest. I met with one successful and smart guy who runs a consultancy and he swears he never looks for work it "just finds him". Well, that is sort of true but not really the whole truth or being totally honest. Specifically in his case, he does a lot of tech training, writing and is involved in a specific tech scene. So in the end he is doing a ton of marketing and talking about his team and their abilities, he's just not out cold calling or using a lot of traditional marketing.

Also, consulting can enter into feast or famine mode unless you designate someone to keep deal flow moving. This isn't optional and can't be something you do half hearted. It takes dedication, but it doesn't have to be sole sucking shit work, it should be fun and be a lot about pre-sales and pre-qualification of clients. It can even be something that is a shared duty but it has to be dedicated time every week.

it should be fun and be a lot about pre-sales and pre-qualification of clients.

One of the things that we have been caught up in before is a continuous sales cycle where the client has no intention of actually committing to picking up our services but rather is seeing how much pre-consulting work they can get out of us. This has only happened a couple of times in our history but when it does it is costly to whoever is working the sale as it's not really a salaried deal with us. So we get a little gun shy about extensive pre-sales. As well we are trying to move away from a contracting / consulting service and into something that we have some ownership of.

part of the pre-qualification is shutting down pre-sales when the client is just sucking you dry for no benefit. The key is getting from talking to action. Like I said, that can be pretty damn fast once you get some practice at it and learn which key words to look for and how to direct the conversation to decisions.

Developers many (maybe most) times get to wrapped up in the details of the project and forget to close the deal first, leading the clients to "take advantage" of you. We have all done it and still do it from time to time. It is smart to use a pre-qualification interview of a few questions. You don't do it in the "interview" style, but you get some qualifying questions in so you can frame the project to see if it is even a decent match before you put too much time into it. Budget and timeframe are the two critical keys to get out in the open early, which generally prevents a huge portion of wasted time on both sides. Not only that, it has let me refer leads to other shops/developers that might be a better fit and then I will get a referral fee. Likewise, I happily pay referral fees to others who send clients my way.

Genius, pitch your service disguised in a genuine question. :)

But in all seriousness, with the team you have, it sounds like you need a full time business development person. Ideally that would be you but maybe this is not part of your skill set. To feed those mouths you need revenue and getting work through the door is a full time job.

A bizdev person can be expensive but the idea is that they pay for themselves (easier said than done). Rather than hiring a full time bizdev, you could instead try to build a network of bizdev people around you. They could receive a bonus if x% for any lead that turns into a contact (again, easier said than done).

Other thing that might work is to get into contact with recruiters (I know, I'm out of a limb). You can let them know that you have a team of devs ready to go that they can fall back on in case of emergencies or what ever.

Genius, pitch your service disguised in a genuine question. :)

I know it's not out of the realm of possibility on HN and I do like that HN is not adverse to shameless promotion but my first and foremost interest is in the opinions of the group on how to parlay this into what the team wants. As we just keep circling this subject, one of our big contracts is winding down again so the subject has once again come to the forefront. All of us have no doubt that we will replace the contract but no one is thrilled about the idea. There is a deep desire to have some ownership or at least some long term interest in a codebase.

Other thing that might work is to get into contact with recruiters (I know, I'm out of a limb). You can let them know that you have a team of devs ready to go that they can fall back on in case of emergencies or what ever.

This has been the majority of our leads, we have about 4 recruiters that when they see a pattern of hiring by a company tend to recommend getting in contact with us, they of course take their margin of the top of the team but it is less than standard recruiting arrangements. One of the things about us is that money is equally split among the team. None of us take a cut off the top.

>> One of the things about us is that money is equally split among the team. None of us take a cut off the top.

That's interesting. So, there is actually no money to grow the business? I.e. profit that can be reinvested for growth? This might actually be the root cause of your problem (although it's difficult to tell).

No we don't really keep a fund as we are technically not a business. Some of us have our own consultancy but the rate we negotiate per head goes directly to each contributing member of the team.

That's how offshoring companies like Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, Wipro, do: bizdev person gets a fat cut like x% from the offshoring contract. They are like enterprise sales at big companies.

In the states, most of bizdev is about selling a product. Companies like IBM do swap deals: AT&T outsources it IT work, in return IBM buys stuff from ATT (cellphone, network, phone services, etc).

So, the parent poster should troll on Linkedin and look for the bizdev folks who work for Indian offshoring companies, and network with them, and see where it leads to.

Who is the marketing guy among your team? It seems like you need a "CEO" who knows how to talk and bring projects in. Plus it seems like you are good fit for taking on outsourcing projects.

We are missing that guy, we have talked about outright hiring that role several times. Currently Hung and I kind of split that role, while the other guys bring stuff to the table from time to time. We have done some outsourcing projects but again, there is a desire in the group to have some ownership or at least belonging to something more permanent than a 6 month to 1.5 year gig.

I would pitch this as outsourced technology team for sales / marketing oriented entrepreneurs, startups and other companies without a dev team that does not want to recruit, hire, train, manage. It's the opposed of sales and marketing outsourcing, which we do, which is in demand and quite lucrative when done correctly.

Checkout crunchbase.com - whenever somebody gets an investment there and you like what they do that may be an opportunity to help them with their growth.

Just talking to people on your networks raises the chances of spotting a place / an idea how to find a one.

That is a good idea, thanks for the suggestion. We try to network as much as possible but it's rare we find people in the right place at the right time.

Stupid question: have you tried marketing? Do you have a site? Copy? An email address? A pricing structure? A small profile on each team member?

(If you do, please post it here! Would love to see it, you guys sound cool).

No and we have kicked this around several times, but it always ends up we fall into contracts and the idea get's shelved again because we all get too busy. We tend to rely just on our linked in profiles and send those, I can certainly post our profiles if anyone is interested in seeing who the members are but we have not embarked on marketing via a site or material partly because we don't know what we are. We are certainly not a company, and we are not really a headhunter outfit. But it is becoming apparent that we are a little more organized than just a group of friends.

If you are interested in the bios of the team here are the profiles of some of the main guys:

Myself: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentonsmeltzer

Hung Chen: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/hung-chen/20/51/827

Brian Posey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/btposey

Mike Dunn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/mike-dunn/2/606/76

Tom Marra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tmarra

Roy Bowen: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/roy-bowen/2b/11a/328

Robert Allison: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=16189839&authType=N...

Robin Jacques: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/robin-jacques/3/b47/50b

Robert Marsicano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marsaware

There are a few more guys but that is a pretty good cut across many of the guys that have worked together off and on for a while.

I thought the way it usually works is that the leader of the group gets hired as CTO somewhere, and then brings the rest of the team with him as subordinates?

Yes this has been a pattern we have seen as well, but as the market has shifted away from employees and more towards contract based employment we have seen that dynamic shift some. Also as we have focused on being a distributed team we have seen more contract based work. That is the piece we are all missing is a longer term relationship with a company that we are more of a permanent fixture with.

My employer has one contracting firm where they are the primary client.

They bought a 3rd party software package. It was poorly written and they couldn't figure out how to get it to work. They looked at the comments in the code, saw the author's name, hired him has a consultant, and he was able to get it to work.

He has a good strategy for maximizing his team's job security. Use a heavily obfuscated style, so now your client is dependent on you to keep their business running. I can just barely maintain his code (I.e., it takes me a day to do something that would take 15 minutes if it was written cleanly.).

Aim at fast growing startups that don't have strong tech teams. Be a tech team in a box. Have someone in SanFran selling you as that. Take equity from each client.

Your pitch is basically: you (the startup) have funding and product market fit, but don't have a strong tech team. It's gonna take you 3-6 months to build one. We can get you one today. You pay us market + equity.

Have you checked out http://www.teamedwith.com? I wanted to invest in them on AngelList, but the min syndicate was just a tad too high for me.

GroupTalent (https://grouptalent.com/welcome/) used to be circling around a similar pain point (helping co's hire teams of developers that have worked together in the past).

Haven't checked them out in a few years (not sure what to make of their expired SSL cert), but I thought the model was interesting nonetheless.

It's a good idea but I have to wonder what the potential market is, I don't know of many other groups like ours, but then again it may be that our group consumed the fledgling groups that we ran into that where similar.

I have not, currently I only get a sign up screen stating that they are in alpha.

"...though none of the developers were equity holders..."

Why?

Young and inexperienced, at the time of the first wave aka the .com boom, would be the main reason. I did have a little equity in the start-up that we exited to Hotels.com on but honestly I did not know my value or the advantage I hade in negotiations at the time. Knowledge like the stuff shared on HN was locked away and not readily available so each member was going thru start-ups on their own. The second reason would be that after that wave start-ups started to centralize in the Vally so we see a lot less start-up opportunities now. We do have a few guys out in the Vally but they are the younger guys that we have worked with who took the older guys in our groups advices and headed out there while their life situation allowed for it.

Infosys, TCS, HCL etc

Hey! This is an interesting topic! What kind of technologies you folks are interested in & have worked around mostly?

I have few things in mind, but not sure how plausible it would be for your team!

I listed a few of them but it is standard modern technology stacks, a lot of Angular, React, Ember, Node etc. we have a couple of guys that do Ruby on the back end, a few that do Java and some .Net back end guys. Then there are some of us like myself that dabble in the more niche stuff like Clojure and Lisp.