I am a senior software engineer who wants to start my own software development company
I am working as a software engineer at different posts since a decade and now I am looking to start my own software development company. My business model would be offshore development.
I have created a website for the company (not a tough thing to do) and also created accounts on different freelance websites.
Now the problem is I am just a single person in my company and I have another full time job. I bid on these freelancing websites via that company name, but didn't have much luck. How can I get someone to do business development for me as I don't have money to do so and certainly I am not good at it but I am technically very good and can take care of each part of the project.
I am lost and want to make it work. I am not going to quit. I want to get business or projects for my company. As for as development and it's processes are concerned, I am very good at those.
Getting Started Business Offshore
-
possible duplicate of [How to start a Software Company](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57380/how-to-start-a-software-company) – El Yusubov 11 years ago
1 Answer
It's Going to be Tiresome
You won't be able to sustain both jobs at once, or at least it's going to be difficult. Not impossible, but pretty darn difficult, and it gets worse over time. Trust me, I've juggled up to 3 jobs at once, and it was difficult!
Build a Portfolio
You will need to build a portfolio of your projects to get customers to have confidence in you and your company. Of course, at first it's going to be hard for anyone to trust you on freelancing sites if you've got nothing to show. So build a web presence and a portfolio to showcase what you've done, give examples of deliverables, documentation, technical documentation, etc... (possibly available only on request and with agreement of your previous customers).
Maybe build a few demo sites to show off, even if they're not actual paid-for projects. That still allows you to show things you can then develop for people (and that you can potentially reuse, depending on licensing and your contract conditions with your customers).
Market yourself any chance you get. Your profile doesn't point to a web page or anything, for instance. Maybe that's wise for now, but later you might want to link it there.
Maybe try to find some smaller local business looking to get a web store and build it for them. You can offer reduced prices for these and support fees to support yourself, and then include them in your portfolio.
-
@vicky: If you've developed them and you've given ownership of the products to your customers after their completion, you need your customers to grant you authorization to use these projects for bragging rights. For those where you don't have these rights and don't have a strong NDA, you can include them in your portfolio but without details identifying the customer and the product (many companies do that, it's not the most compelling, but it's still OK). – Haylem 11 years ago
-
@vicky: also, you *can* make a company run from small tasks, but that means you need a bigger workforce to handle the projects, and you're going to need to play a tight game of bargaining to pull the prices up and your margin might not be that high on each project, Yet again, these smaller projects can then be turned into bigger projects and help you build customer fidelity. – Haylem 11 years ago
-
thanks for your great advice. I have a couple of potential clients locally, lets me pitch ideas to them. Lets see how it goes. I might be able to get such smaller tasks/projects but when I have 3 or 5 developers working for me, how could I get more leads/projects. running a company even small on the bases of freelancing websites don't work and I have already shared my that experience. I also know the Business development people start their own company and those who work as a BDM don't make much contribution. In fact the company's CEO themselves get the real projects for their company – Vicky 11 years ago
