[HumanDrivenDev]

The biggest impediment for me would be finding clients. IME most programmers dont meet a lot plant potential clients when they are maintaining internal software. Even if they work for a consulting company, you can't use them due to restraint of trade clauses.

So how would you get the first customers? I'm just some guy off the street, no one is going bet money on me performing a function for their business.

[kevinburke]

Go to meetups, talk to colleagues who have quit your current company, try to attend or speak at conferences, start a blog and post at the bottom that you’re available for consulting...

There’s no rule that says you can’t pitch projects to people, if you think you could help make a company better call them up and pitch them on it.

[jamestimmins]

If you don't mind sharing:

1. What kind of meetups? I'm guessing developers are inclined to go to developer meetups, but it seems unlikely that potential clients would be there.

2. How have you managed to get hired by technology companies as a consultant? My clients are mostly folks that are non-technical and need someone to build them custom software. I'd love to work with tech-focused companies but am not sure how to find/pitch those opportunities.

[kevinburke]

Living in SF helps. I meet people at meetups, on Twitter, through Github, I reach out to people I think are interesting...

You could try finding a company you’d want to work for and take one of their engineers to work, or try to target companies that need your skill set. “Hi you really need a Go client library - I can build that for you” etc.

[jamestimmins]

That's actually really helpful. It's tempting as a consultant to be reactive, but these are a few ways of being proactive that I had not considered. Thanks!

[mickael-kerjean]

Not the OP but in the same situation as him

> What kind of meetups?

Any meetup that could have you next potential customer. For me it's meetup about Marketing, Sales, pure networking, Developer conf, .... Force youself to 1 to 2 meetup a week, this is not a one off thing but a long term investment if you want to be on the call when someone you've met hear about a project within their company.

> How have you managed to get hired by technology companies as a consultant?

For me, it's not really technology companies but companies that sees IT as a cost center, the usual scenario being they need a solution for a problem and don't have the know how to make it all work because IT isn't part of their core skills and the IT guys are only there to manage the network and debug their window machines

[jamestimmins]

Dang, two meetups per week is quite a commitment, but I can see it being valuable over the long term.

My interest in technology companies is that, presumably, they have more interesting technical challenges and are willing to spend the time/money to build optimal solutions from a technical standpoint.

[lawik]

I have a free sales force. It is an army of LinkedIn recruiters.

[namanyayg]

Could you elaborate on how LinkedIn has helped you find contract work?

[lawik]

When recruiters inevitably try to recruit me (because software dev) I tell them I exclusively do contract work. My profile also mentions this. Some of them have clients that are open to this. They pitch the client to me. If I'm interested we discuss skills, rates and they pitch me to their client.

I've also reached out to a few recruiters that have seemed reasonable and gotten work that way.

LinkedIn noise/signal ratio isn't the best. Other sites have been better. But I've found work that way.