[swatcoder]

It depends on your seniority and speciality. It takes quite a while to warm new team members into real productivity on mainline technical labor. Often, the first month or two of a new hire has a negative impact on total team efficiency. It's a similar principle to why you can't just staff up at the last minute before a deadline.

The exception is if you're an expert in some specialty that's relevant and underserved on the team. In that case, the relationship becomes more of a consulting role, where you do a very specific thing very effectively and in a way that it can be smoothly handed off to long-term maintainers.

Another opportunity is direct contracting for very early stage entrepreneurs. Building the prototypes or MVP's that help them understand and articulate their ideas. Even then, four months can be pretty narrow window in the real world and there's often a bias for people who'll stick around for the next phase.

One final possibility -- and the least reliant on other people's accommodation -- would be for you to just expand the period of your cycle. Can you commit 12-18 months at a time? That's actually pretty normal in the startup world, and if you manage your finances well, it can set you up for an equally long stint of solo work.

[jonathanmv]

MVP's and rapid prototyping are my specialities. Where do you think one can find people looking to develop rapid prototypes? Projects that are meant to be a proof of concept and then discarded

[swatcoder]

Outside of just mining your existing network, the first places I'd look would be AngelList and local tech networking events. Upwork could yield fruit too, but it can be a noisy place.

You'll generally be looking for people who are new to the industry and are just putting a toe in. More experienced entrepreneurs often have people in their network that can already help them through this phase.

Pursue smaller contracts than your ideal and expect them to grow into the relationships/opportunities you have in mind.

[jonathanmv]

That's a very wise advice swatcoder. Thank you very much