Ask HN: I built a whole team for hire, what to do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I built a whole team for hire, what to do?

I co-founded a startup which I built a team for.

We have moved together to a holiday house and kept hacking for 8 months, so we really got used to working together (and we were friends/family to begin with).

Unfortunately the business turned out to be not viable, and although everyone is capable enough to go and continue their lives I feel like it's a not too imaginative solution for us to just go and work at different companies.

I'm sure someone more business savvy could get more out of this situation. Any thoughts?

View on HN

This reminded me of Stripe's "Bring Your Own Team" that I saw on here a while ago. There is an update on the original post though that says it didn't end up working out for them, but still might be some useful info for you.

https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own-team

You need a technology or skillset to sell. Focus on business to business as that is easier and more stable and pays better.

For example in my city there is a 35 people company that does nothing but Magento projects.

> You need a technology or skillset to sell

Can you elaborate, please?

If you want to setup a consulting firm, you cannot sell yourself as experts on Go and Angular. You need to find some enterprise platform that a lot of businesses are already, and become really good at working with it. Then you can sell yourselves as experts on that particular technology.

I already gave you the example of a consulting firm that does nothing but Magento.

That's great advice, thank you! I never thought about that yet. I don't clearly understand the reasons behind it but I will definitely research this.

Thank you.

Great advice. You need to differentiate yourself. Everyone these days pitch themselves as Angular experts or Ruby expert. Those skills are commodities.

why not look into starting an agency or consulting company.

1. create a company name 2. create a couple different business cards with things like web design, emarketing, etc. 3. hit the pavement. find businesses looking for services.

That might not be a bad idea at all. Haven't thought about face 2 face selling but might be just what we need.

Bingo. The key is your pipeline.

How many folks? Which area?

Looks like this user could be looking for you guys.

London right now. 3 developers at the moment, we used to have 2 more members (non devs).

Eaze is hiring for a BUNCH of positions. Have your team check us out, and let me know if you all are interested! https://www.eaze.com/careers

Love the mission. Any room for remote?

Sadly, not at the moment, but feel free to apply and we might be able to work things out. We don't like one size fits all rules around here :)

Thank you for the heads up! We will have a look, we definitely like the industry, that's for sure :P!

could list out your skill sets?

Sure, tech wise it's mostly Angular 2 and Go, but we range from infrastructure to product design. We are also into automation testing a lot (nightwatch, protactor).

We have 1 senior developers and the rest mid level.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com