Ask HN: Opened a LLC in USA, where should I look for clients?

[sodiumtech]

I am from Cloud/DevOps domain and trying to transition myself from an employee to a contractor. I am not a US citizen but currently have opened an LLC in USA, got Payoneer and Stripe as well. Now where should I find the companies/individuals to get some contracts? TIA

[brudgers]

People you know is the only worthwhile client pipeline.

So start with people you already know.

And work on getting to know more people.

To a first approximation, every potential client who wants a contractor has one. There are only two likely categories of potential clients who will cold call you:

1. Potential clients with no track record.

2. Potential clients with a track record of bad relationships with previous contractors.

Potential clients with no track record might become good clients. Or they might become clients with a bad track record.

Potential clients with bad track records are best avoided.

Potential clients with good track records are highly unlikely to work with a new contractor because ongoing relationships with contractors are part of what makes them good clients.

Experienced contractors move heaven and earth to hold on to good clients.

Basically modulo people who know you, the potential clients for new contractors is a lemons market. Good clients are already in long term relationships...again, long term relationships are what makes clients good clients.

The LLC, Stripe, etc. are pretend work. Without clients your liability is zero, and there is no need for a payments mechanism.

Finding clients is all that matters. It matters more than doing the work well.

Good luck.

[candiddevmike]

Sorry to tell you this, but you picked a terrible time to start contracting. I'd start on Upwork and see if you can get any bites on there.

Also, I personally wouldn't use the US LLC if you don't live in the US--that would be a huge red flag for me as a potential client. Contracting is all about trust, and you want your business to appear as solid as possible.

[MuffinFlavored]

> I'd start on Upwork and see if you can get any bites on there.

Upwork is international and you're competing with millions of people willing to work for $5/day, are you not?

[candiddevmike]

Gotta start somewhere and establish a list of references and a portfolio of past projects. The alternative is LinkedIn and wait for a recruiter to offer you a contract while they take 50% of the hourly rate. It's a really bad time for contracting.

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Upwork and Freelancer are cesspits. Filled with people that don't bother reading your job and just spam your job listings. I'd sooner cold email startups asking if they need help (as annoying as that is).

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Yes, but most good clients aren't focused on price-above-everything. There are other axes that you can compete on.

[anonu]

I disagree with both you statements:

Why is it a terrible time?

What's wrong with setting up a US entity? Actually from a US employer perspective you have a bit more recourse if you need to use the legal system than someone operating entirely out of a foreign country.

[pxue]

Been contracting for 7 years and there's been a 10x in opportunities from Q42023 to Q12024.

Things are looking very up.

[sodiumtech]

You wanna share some tips on getting first few clients? any platform or just start sending emails and calling directly to them? Thanks

[gregjor]

An old joke about new product development at Apple went “First design the icon, then make the t-shirts.”

Setting up an LLC and the other superficial trappings of a real business amounts to making the t-shirts. You have no customers, no idea how to get customers, no insight into the market from a contracting perspective.

You can find plenty of freelancing & contracting advice online, useful and not so useful, if you do the work. Mostly it distills down to contacts and reputation. Posting the equivalent of “I’ve set the table, how do I cook the meal?” seems like a big ask.

[23B1]

You should find out who the biggest cloud integrators are in your area and get in touch with whoever runs their frontline, e.g. who makes the deals. Typically this is a "managing director" or similar young executive who is responsible for the P&L of their own region, vertical, or segment.

One of the thing these guys will spend a lot of time on is staffing, e.g. if/when they win a deal, will they be able to service it. Freelancers who can be relied upon are extremely valuable for this individual because they can trust you to do you job well but they don't have to carry your full expenses, just your billable rate.

[gist]

I never understand (ok I understand but take issue with) these types of questions. Sure nice to read ideas people give on HN but really isn't this a classic case of RTFM. Where that means 'do some reading spend some time do some research and FIGURE IT OUT ON YOUR OWN'. What changed (old timer here btw) in culture where everyone wants the answer from someone else. There is a wealth of free information on the internet that can be had. Do some work yourself then come back with specific questions (on another forum probably) and tie up the loose ends.

Part of being an entrepreneur is figuring things out on your own with nominal help from others. In the old day btw when you 'started a business' (was not called a 'startup') you not only didn't have money to buy expensive help you were lucky to even get any help. You wore most if not all hats.

[andrewmcwatters]

Why would other contractors tell you where to get their business?

[tptacek]

Because they have too much business to actually deliver, and would get a cut if you did some of the work for them; it's called subcontracting, and it's very common.

[MuffinFlavored]

What's funny is think of the "value charged but not added here". By all means I'm sure the parent contractor might do some light management to make sure delivery goes as expected but what do they take, a 15-30% cut compared to the subcontractor? All because they found + negotiated the original lead

[derstander]

Alternatively you could think of the value added as the general contractor is you loaning the subcontractor your reputation. Certainly that reputation should be on the line if the sub (and by extension the general) fails to deliver.

Though from what I hear this isn’t necessarily the case in construction / home improvement.

But in any case, if you can’t close the deal yourself, 70-85% of something sounds better than 100% of nothing.

My reputation is worth a fair amount to me, but I’ve never been a general or sub contractor though so my opinion is probably pretty naïve.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

If I'm going to be on the hook for the work, you bet I'm taking 30% minimum!

[javajosh]

Maybe start with your current employer? Then expand out via LinkedIn. You could also try fiverr but that will generally be pretty cut-rate "doing it for the exposure" type deal - but might be useful if you want to get your feet wet, and get some genuine client recommendations. Disclaimer: I've only been a fiverr client, not a provider, and not for devops.

I would also note that anyone looking to hire you will want you to be an expert on AWS, not a generalist on "Cloud". Similar to how they will want you to know Oracle, not "relational databases". Of course, milage varies as consultancies like Anderson and Deloitte charge big money to hire out generalists.

[pxue]

Go to places where your potential customers are looking for help.

[fakedang]

From your network of friends, former colleagues and family.

[4b11b4]

I'm 2/2 on getting hired as general labor in small/medium biz and then approaching the owner to help them "automate that repetitive stuff that they know how to do by heart". Now I have a contract with them.

The reason this works in contrast to the owner going out and hiring a "software contractor" is because now I know their entire business and they don't need to explain to me what they need, I already know and can then just build it. That's a huge barrier for any owner/founder - they don't even know where to start with trying to explain to someone what kind of software they need and are weary of getting taken advantage of. But if you've been inside their business, then this is eliminated.

I jokingly call my consultancy "HAI" (hesitation automation information, also "yes" in Japanese).

Find a small business you actually like the product or service of personally, get in at the bottom, perform all of the different roles, and quickly evaluate the owner to see if there's potential. Work your way out of the initial responsibilities if you get a contract.

[cranberryturkey]

i don't know. c2c contracts are hard to find these days, there's dice.com but from my expierence its mostly spam these days.

[bidandanswer]

Traditional recruiters have really good leads. Just say you're looking to structure the "job" through an LLC instead of W-2. Pick a niche and demand easily outstrips supply. You can set your own hours and command very high rates.

[karanmg]

You might be able to find some here, or on LinkedIn.

What are some projects u have done in the past? Where r u located? What US time zones will u overlap with? What do you charge?

[HeyLaughingBoy]

@OP:

Don't refer to anything in your communications as "u" or "ur" or the like. It will result in an instant discard from most reputable clients.

I mentioned above that there are other (better) competitive axes than price. Clear English communication is definitely one of them.

[mnky9800n]

mAyB3 itz FUNNZ0rZ to type ur txt liek dis!

[bidandanswer]

Stripe takes a hefty cut. Use USDC. Costs a fraction of a penny and settles in less than a second.

[codegeek]

Still shilling crypto even in 2024 ?

[bidandanswer]

Standard Stripe fees on $250k revenue:

- 2.9% + 30¢ per charge

- Assume net-30 invoices

- Total fees: 2.9% * $250k + 30¢ * 12 = $7,253.60

- Stripe can freeze your money arbitrarily and indefinitely

Standard USDC fees on Solana:

- Less than 1 cent per transaction

- Total fees: < 12¢

What's your argument?

[consumer451]

Red flags which crypotocurrency may raise for a client aside, isn't it higher friction for the vast majority of companies?

It's hard enough to get clients, but then to have to say.. oh, also please use this other payment system which I will likely have to walk you through setting up once you clear it with accounting?

[bidandanswer]

In my experience, clients have asked me if it's alright to pay me in USDC, not the other way around.

The genie's out of the bottle. Once your funds are on chain, you have instant settlement, zero fees, and zero risk of an intermediary arbitrarily freezing your funds. No point in going back, unless your counterparty demands it.

[consumer451]

That's interesting, what industries do your clients work in?

[bidandanswer]

Trading and finance. It makes sense that they are crypto friendly, given their close proximity to it.

I suspect the rest of the commercial world will become much friendlier to it as more and more businesses are onboarded.

The pros vastly outweigh the cons and if you need something like escrow (or another trusted intermediary) then you can always revert to the legacy financial system for that. Both have their use cases.

[tanelpoder]

Would it be correct to expand that the clients are in crypto-trading and crypto-finance?

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For the most part big companies won't be paying via stripe anyway, but even if they did want to pay on credit card they certainly won't want to pay with cryptocurrency, even if it is a stable coin.

[bidandanswer]

In my experience, that's not true.

I've accepted hundreds of thousands of USDC in revenue in other ventures.

I've also wired and accepted wires for similar amounts. Each time I get a call from the bank and it takes a half a day at the very least. Sometimes it takes weeks to unfreeze my money in various payment processors.

On chain, it's faster. It's cheaper.

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Would love to see some stats on the number of companies that are prepared to use USDC vs bank transfers. I'm going to suspect it's low until proven otherwise.

[bidandanswer]

And the number of companies that made use of computers was low when they first came out, despite the fact that the fledgling technology was genuinely valuable to them.

What's your point?

[bidandanswer]

No explanation, just downvotes?

Standard Stripe fees on $250k revenue:

- 2.9% + 30¢ per charge

- Assume net-30 invoices

- Total fees: 2.9% * $250k + 30¢ * 12 = $7,253.60

- Stripe can freeze your money arbitrarily and indefinitely

Standard USDC fees on Solana:

- Less than 1 cent per transaction

- Total fees: < 12¢

[codegeek]

Hint: It is not about the fees. The 3% fee is a much smaller problem to have than what the world of crypto brings. Oh and while we are at it, remind me how to get majority of customers to pay in crypto who are used to just credit cards or wires ?

[bidandanswer]

> The 3% fee is a much smaller problem to have than what the world of crypto brings.

That's not an argument. Name the problems specifically.

> Oh and while we are at it, remind me how to get majority of customers to pay in crypto who are used to just credit cards or wires

There are tons of off-the-shelf checkout flows that allow customers to pay in cash and companies to receive the funds on chain.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Because 2.9% is just a cost of doing business. If it's that critical to your margins, raise your price to compensate for it. Adding friction by using crypto is likely to cost you far more than 2.9% by losing the contract altogether.

[bidandanswer]

Okay. I have personally saved tens of thousands of dollars and hours of headache by just doing my business on chain.

How valuable is 2.9% of $1m+ to you?

[Zetobal]

Finding a client who wants to pay in crypto... priceless.

[bidandanswer]

See my other comment. Not hard.

And it will only get easier as time goes on.

[Zetobal]

It's neither easy nor will it get easier.

[bidandanswer]

All of the facts contradict you.

Two years ago I had to fend off contracts that paid in USDC.

It's easier to find someone to pay in USDC today than it was then.

Market share and volume will continue to grow.

What do you have against a genuinely useful technology with tangible benefits?

- Cheaper

- Faster

- No arbiter risk

- Built-in escape hatch for political dissidents and enemies of the state

If you want a trusted arbiter for all your financial transactions, you can continue to use the legacy financial system and pay the costs for doing so. I'm not arguing crypto will replace it. Both have their use case.

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Whining about downvotes is not likely to help. I replied to your original comment.