curious, how do you decide on which page to start from? Popular directories?
54 karma · joined September 5, 2012
- Everyday, I work on the things with clear deadlines and consequences for not taking immediate action.
- Plan and schedule those things that are not urgent but important according to priority and criticality.
- Delegate the things that are urgent not not important.
- Remove the things that are not urgent nor important. It's distraction.
In my case, I have been involved with many startups in the AI/ML B2B space from the early days of my career as a software developer.
At one point, I recognized that if you want to build something great, it really helps to listen to the customers and the prospects. So I started to shove myself into a hybrid role of sales engineering and software engineering. To get started on the sales engineering, I reached out to all the business developers friends and asked them to share their frameworks, processes, and learning materials. Also did a lot of Googling to educate myself. Then I asked the appropriate people in the company if I can join small-stake sales call. To start with small-stake calls and learn how things work. It did not take a long time to start receiving invites from the sales to help with high-stake customers. Since in most cases, people who can build and sell (you don't have to be the best at either) are rare and needed.
IMHO, I think the problem is "getting projects from 0 to POC/MVP state." These are projects that typically have an expiry. Either the MVP fails to validate its viability, or when it succeeds, the business will try to find someone who can commit full-time. It's hard to find something in the middle. More often than not, consultants who position themselves here spend more time on finding new contracts than doing the work. Since once a contract is completed, there is little continuity to it. Aside from a small maintenance contract, which is not enough to keep the light on. Doing the work pays, searching for work does not.
Another problem is, you are in the space where you have to compete the most, and therefore "building MVP" contracts become a pricing competition. Competing with offshore dev shops on price is hard to do.
So, to sum up, in my humble opinion, you need to spend time upgrading business development and sales skills. Think about what unique skills you can offer that are less price competitive in the market and offer you a long-term contract. I hope this helps.