Pitching startups on technical writing | Hacker News Reader

Pitching startups on technical writing

10 pointschipotle_coyote10 comments

I've been a technical writer for startups--recently at Realm, before that at RethinkDB--and I'm thinking about trying to make a go of documentation consulting in the new year. I think this is something a lot of startups, particularly in the developer tools space, could use. Many of them don't have enough work to hire a full-time technical writer, but they still need docs. I've worked at startups and small companies as a developer, too, and I know that even when everyone agrees in theory that docs are important, in practice they tend to remain in "minimum viable" shape indefinitely.

So here's my dilemma: I don't know how to pitch this. There are probably a few people I can talk to about leads (and I'll likely be doing that after the holidays), but I'm not sure how to approach folks I have no relationship with. I'm aware that to some degree this question is more "How do consult," but I have a definite sense that it's a lot easier to pitch yourself as a JavaScript, Rails or even (gasp) PHP dev than it is as a docs writer: it's hard not to notice, for example, that when HN does its monthly "Who's hiring?" posts, it's rare to see anyone looking for tech writers--even companies building APIs, where the documentation is arguably the user interface.

If you're a tech writer yourself, do you have any experience with this? And if you're not a tech writer, how do you think a pitch like this could work?

Developer tools startups definitely sound like a promising audience for this. A convincing pitch will show them that the output of your services will earn more than it costs to hire you.

One way to do that might be if you could show some sort of survey data showing that X% of hiring managers select tools based on documentation availability/quality. Ideally, you'd come up with a way to project the impact on their conversion rates if they improved their docs in specific ways.

Yes there are far fewer opportunities for tech writers compared to developers.

As far as pitching, build out your site and writing samples. I would target companies who currently hire tech writers, they may require some temporary help.

Been a contract tech writer for many years but mostly get work from word of mouth, contacts built up over years, agencies, and responding to vacancies directly.

1. Write educational content targeted at your audience, as lead-in to "and if you don't have time to do all this yourself, hire me to do it for you."

2. Post educational content in places where your target market hangs out (e.g. here).

I think part of the issue is probably many new companies don’t realize they need this. So you might want to start by educating them.

Any reason to limit yourself to startups? More mature companies might recognize the need easier.

That's certainly possible.

Limiting your focus makes marketing easier.

I agree. But with two caveats:

1. Make sure you’ve picked the right segment to focus on.

2. If you are open to other segments, don’t make your marketing alienate those other segments.

Put together a portfolio. Put it on a website explaining what your value position is, why people need you. List it in your HN profile.

I do like to see sample of your technical writings.

The biggest sample that's already up is the doc set for RethinkDB (rethinkdb.com). That's not 100% mine--they had an engineering culture that valued documentation even before I got there, which helped immensely!--but I've worked on most of the pages, writing a fair number from scratch.

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