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by shankar1221989 4899 days ago
Who is your first customer? Build your product around him.
1 comments

That's the thing - there's no "product" as such. Or, to be more precise, the product is purely consultative, the kind of work that, say, a think-tank does. The use case is, that a governmental agency needs help with analyzing a large dataset. We write the code, we do the heavy-lifting, and then present them with the final analysis.
He's not that far off. You'll have to build your relationship off your first client. The relationship will be your product.

What's your consulting experience?

Okay. Yes, that sounds about right. About 2 years of consulting gigs, with IBM and Cvent(event-management software) - but I've also worked with a think-tank, so I have a bit of insight into policy analyses and so on.
Are you going for a developer type role?
From a personal standpoint, no - I'll be working towards building relationships with mandarins. But at first, I would be writing code myself, as well as writing up reports and stuff. Eventually, I'm looking at a scenario where we have coders, and we have people interfacing with governments, reporting on our findings.
You're just going to have to land your first gig, then expand your way from there. You'll have to knock them dead, and slowly bring in more people.

Sidenote - Sounds like you're in the DC area, and if you're going for government work, I hope you have a lot of solid connections because 2-3 years of experience isn't always enough to land much more that a contract workerbee position.