Wild assumption without knowing the details: you need a non-product-person on your team. If you are all implementers (PMs, developers, designers etc.) then you might not be focusing on the right things - you might be too focused on building. You might need someone who can get out there and start talking to people, without talking about solutions.

Being a product person doesn't mean being focused on building. A product person is actually the one focused on talking to people how solve their problems into a product.

Yep, you are totally right. We did lean to building a lot in the past, and I believe we still do even though we try to do our best not to.

That's why I am doing this Ask HN and it's extremely valuable.

I also want to figure out who to talk with next so I can understand their problems. I am thinking talking to companies and startups in general about their problems and challenges might be beneficial too. Might start podcast series about that.

Thanks!

> But who is “your” company and how do we pick the “niche”?

Turns out, this is a common problem.

Friendly Challenge: imagine 3 very different future niches for your team. Leveraging your interests, experience/expertise.

Mix in the Clients you'll serve, Products you build, and Problems you solve. Each version would have a 5 year plan. Start a discussion -- which one energizes your team?

More on this subject by the authors of Design Your Life > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SemHh0n19LA

Highly recommend their book! PM me if you want to discuss.

Thanks for the brain food! Will check it out and be in touch if it sparks questions!

Hope you get some answers cause I'm in bit of a similar situation and the roadblock is frustrating.

I wrote a bit about this yesterday[0] and here[1]. The (enterprise) clients we had all valued our work, nobody haggled that much, but we went above and beyond. We did dive into their domain and worked on problems in the banking, energy, transportation, telecom sectors, etc.

What we did was to refine the process of consulting: validate the client, walk them through a blueprint for success and be explicit about the requirements and the people who need to be on board before we could start.

Then we worked on our platform (https://iko.ai) to remove as many tasks off our plate as possible.

We also had to think about verticals and we'll get there with a package for each vertical if we're thinking in terms of sectors, or in terms of functionality when it's something common. That's why we built our platform with a plugin architecture. It has the time series forecast plugin, the sentiment analysis plugin, etc. And that's also why we made sure they had APIs, so we could compose and do interesting stuff instead of re-deploying everything.

I'd say refine your processes and extract common tasks into your own tooling so that you ship faster. You'll be in a better position to think, and you may have a product for teams similar to yours.

For example, we do ML projects and built our platform to help our own team. There are many teams like us out there. Similarly, there may be many teams like yours out there.

- [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26455105

- [1]: https://iko.ai/docs/story/

Thanks for sharing your story a lot to learn from it! I will definitely go through the brain food you posted, thanks!

Your process makes a lot of sense. Our problem is defining what you already have - "we're a butique consultancy specialized in machine learning."

I see you put a lot of work into it, it's amazing, congrats! Curious to hear how long you take the contracts for?

I believe that we are aiming for something similar to establish. I totally believe that studio like this can delivery much better work with less people that are well played together and are really good at what they do.

Again, thanks for sharing the story!

>Our problem is defining what you already have - "we're a butique consultancy specialized in machine learning."

We were a "pure consulting company" for a period. We drastically changed the process and ruthlessly killed projects to align the company after the co-founder and CTO of that company quit and many in the company panicked because they figured if the CTO quit, it was going to die. We were 17 people at that point working on about 8 projects. When we took over and after the dust settled, we're 6 and generating more with fewer people and one project at a time. I think we generated more revenue last year than all years combined.

Once we killed what needed to be killed and changed the process and collaboration protocol to be more effective [being clear on what to do, what not to do], the next evolution was to aim to be more efficient [do whatever was to be done more efficiently], hence building a platform that suited our needs. In other words, the process part was validating and picking clients, laying the ground rules before we even move further or even think of ML approaches or requesting data. And the tooling part was to make our life easier for model building and deployment and experiment tracking and all the jazz.

This has made our consulting activities more stable, but it was not enough. The next evolution was to get recurring revenue from the platform and shifting our main revenue from consulting to the platform. However, consulting got us here because it allowed us not only to be profitable all these years but also to know what to build and what not to build. In other words, we built the platform to solve our own problems, not for others, but we wouldn't have known what problems to solve if we didn't have them. There are a lot of people trying to build these platforms without having the experience and the scars to discern what actually matters from non-problems for they've never worked on real projects with stakes. Therefore, we probably won't kill the consulting activities because they're our way to keep a finger on the pulse.

>I see you put a lot of work into it, it's amazing, congrats! Curious to hear how long you take the contracts for?

Short answer: it depends on the maturity level of the organization, our experience in that sector or that problem, even personal experience, and whether we have already worked with the client before.

Longer answer:

It depends on many parameters. One of them is the maturity of our clients. There are organizations that are in the "I've heard of this AI stuff" and we sit down with them and explain what we can do, what we can't do, when to use machine learning and when not to use it. It happens we recommend an approach and say to the client they don't really need our services, or that they ought to work on some aspect first before we could be effective. One other category is an organization that has the prerequisites in terms of data, but we help them identify problems that could be solved with machine learning. Sometimes we dive in deep in their own domain and help them discover things in their own field. Other organizations actually have internal ML teams and need support either becauser their team is super busy, or because they know we have worked on a similar problem. One instance was a large organization that has submitted for a tender and was afraid to win because they had never worked in that space but felt compelled to apply because the other two or three competitors did. They wanted our help because we had already worked with the organization they were hoping to work with on a similar problem.

Therefore, the duration will depend on the maturity level of the organization. We are coming up with a way to extract these meetings in a course so we don't have to do it ourselves. So, instead of holding their hands to bring them up to speed, gather pre-requisites, define the problem, they can do it themselves and then we come in. I told you, we systematically strive to reduce our part to its irreducible form, and then we question if that irreducible form truly is irreducible.

For example, one of the things that allowed us to be effective is bringing that background and that experience and talk about what makes a project successful and what makes it fail. Then we decided to put that into a "training material product", if you will. This, too, will be a revenue stream for us, but more importantly reduce the activation energy/serve as a catalyst. We already have video material.

Other parameters are the domain, sector, problem, etc. It takes less time to solve something you already have solved for a someone in the same sector. The experience curve is a thing. I'm really fortunate because there are many problems we've worked on in completely different spaces that I was involved in as a student or personal projects (I read many books on reservoir characterization as a student and had a stint and was about to join an energy services company, I had a project in telecommunications and learned a lot about GSM and CDMA networks, my background is in control systems and instrumentation and was familiar with SCADA, I had also worked on anomaly detection from ECG signals, and multiphase flows in college, etc). Every one of these made my life much, much, easier when dealing with clients and problems in energy, telecommunications, healthcare, etc on these very problems. It is a very funny coincidence. This has reduced the "rig up" time. One of the projects was sped up because I was familiar with safely handling and operating some loud sound producing equipment.

It's also not the same if this is the nth project you do with that client. The whole getting to know each other and knowing how it works is amortized. Relationships compound.

So, the duration depends on many parameters, even anecdotally.

One very important thing. Our CEO is tireless when it comes to bringing in new business or maintaining relationships for years with people.. I'm sure that if he were on your team, he'll be able to dig into your repositories and find something you are "meh" about because "it's just something I did in a week-end" and be able to sell that and make deals on the fly and people will buy it because it actually has value to them.

You'll have to learn to sell things and figure what has value if you have nothing against "sales/business/marketing". My opinion is that you posted this question on HN, so you have a sensibility for this. You'll probably end up learning this whether you have someone who can sell on your team or not. Next is to have someone on your team who can do that, bring in new business and maintain relationships, etc.

One other option is to do the following: talk with an agency that does X with many clients and work together to be a one shop stop for their clients. They'll handle getting clients for their part of the work, and then complement that with building whatever product needs to be built. You said you didn't want to work with clients from all fields. Which clients were a blast to work with? Do more of that. Leverage your experience in that sector/function/industry so projects take less time and effort. Extract features into modules. Notice patterns and common problems. Put that in the toolbox. Integrate these tools into a product for that sector/industry/function.

Wow thank you for such an extensive and valuable write up. Few parts really hit the home, thanks for that! I will be reading this again.

Really valuable info, thanks again!

You have to pick a niche. You are right about that. It is a hard problem as well because there is no guarantee and you need to spend at least 18-36 months before you really quit and move on to next idea.

However, you have 8 years of working for customers, building their products etc. Are you saying that you never came across a few problems within those 8 years that you would like to solve ? Start there. I am sure there are a few areas/problems that you came across. I have been running a SAAS product for almost 7 years now and I have written at least 25 problems that I would love to solve some day if not doing the current business :).

We did and actually many of the products we developed were developed like that. Even our last example https://www.getwelder.com/

The issue is that "success" rate of these products is pretty low generally speaking. And you need to dive deeper into the problem, stay with it for at least a year to understand it properly, build it and mostly build your audience that you matter too.

That's where the "hack" of raising money comes in, but it don't feel right. First it feels like just throwing money at the problem and second we want to take investment from the point of power and not desperation to survive.

> But again, this wasn’t easy. Especially for us who don’t have the expertise in some vertical to understand its problem enough to build a solution for it.

I am not sure if this is necessarily true. You can spend a weekend studying and understanding a vertical you want to build for.

You can start with questions like "what are some of the pain points this vertical has", come up with ideas, test those ideas and make a determination if your idea is worth pursuing.

Should you pick a niche, yes I think this is necessary. For example, instead of focusing on trying to fix the internet for everyone, focus on solving issues in the UI/UX world for example.

Hope this helps.

From our experience yes and no. We built https://www.getwelder.com/ like that.

But year later into the product we feel there are two ways (but it's true that the business model of app like this is just f*ed up too)

Raise money to cover the costs and penetrate the market with this "generalistic" kind of tool.

or

Go for a niche. But this require sticking with the niche for like a year and we found out we don't love the problem space enough to do it. And from current data we don't see enough big differatiors to differentiate ourselves for a niche on short term.

We found this issue with most problem we are solving in vertical we don't understand properly - and by that I mean being part of the problem for at least a year or so and being passionate about it, having people around yourself who have that problem etc.

And you are right, this is about the determination we are not able to do for this kind of vertical for example.

Maybe that's the mistake? But again, there are many things in play with this exact Welder case which I could talk for hours about haha.

Why pick a niche? Why not be the specialist team that embeds in a company to help launch products the company doesn't have the resources to currently deliver? Offer yourselves on a time and materials basis rather than a project scope basis (which helps a bit with client money Vs deliverables convos) and if you strike on a product idea you can white label yourselves work on it in your spare time.

Good advice, we can be positioned like that if this is what companies need. I am just not sure if they really need this. I called this option "Adrenalin shot for your business".

You can't make the product on time? You don't have manpower but need/want to launch this? We are here for you to boost your flow without over-hiring.

Need to validate the need haha

I can guarantee it's something companies need. I've worked for multiple consulting companies that do exactly that. It's also basically Thoughtworks model of developer engagement.

I was in a similar boat, I solved it by carving out a larger problem into smaller ones, establish beachhead, and provide transformative solutions. Since then I closed my firm but happy to look into new opportunities. PM me if you want to discuss any specifics.

We've talked before. Give my explicit take on getting into the ERP space...blunt and raw.

I think your situation is ALL of our situation. We are ALL kickass eng but no connections, no non-tech ie sales/marketing, no industry specific insight and the lack of key to your success: inside connections.

Startups need VC's not for money but for the connections. VC helps the startups get not only in touch with people who makes decisions for the company but moreover have the ability to convince/convey/"pressure" them to at least give you a try. Another reason for VC's; make other startups use your product to launch theirs. Case and point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen He epitomizes that once you have that inside connection, you can make a 1+1 tool for a million dollars and the entire industry will jump on board and pay whatever it takes. It's amazing how people with no clue can quickly build up a company to add 1+1 and turn it into a billion dollar company and you can't even though yours for fraction of the price can do 1+2.

I've been in Silicon Valley and at various FAANG/M to now have a clue to how things work.

My observations:

1. Best products never gets greenlighted....never. Mind boggling.... but true. Decision makers are almost always a non-tech.

2. Company IT's are always looking for sweet deals, kickbacks, no brain implementation/integration and ungodly support

3. Company IT's 90% of work almost always comes from integrating various mismatched platforms

4. enduser's pain is almost never considered. decision process is almost always based on a single usecase for high level's myopic viewpoints.

All above reasons why internals in enterprises absolutely sucks. ABSOLUTELY. You would be blown over by how backwards antique sw is being used by the likes of Apple, Amazon, Cisco, Microsoft and most fortune 500 runs inside because I've worked for most of the top 10 techs. and the worst piece of crap sw: SAP. Every company has this painpoint because it/they integrate all of other barely working junk platforms. So enterprises are basically crippled by an idiot who built their initial foundation. Probably because they lacked the knowledge, took the lowest barrier to entry and big tech junk constantly in their faces and no limit to funds. This is where the big boys like SAP work their evil to get you onto their legacy platform which makes you stuck forever. Once on it, the changes you have to make to your internals are resource impossible. I remember a little while back when I went to HR in a top 10 tech. The sw a HR person was using launched a bunch of DOS window to do some execution. It was unreal.

This brings along another enterprise unicorn: Atlassian. I've been using it for years and there is a reason why they are able to create an eco around their sw.. mainly because their sw platform is so lacking. The most popular extension just to make confluence workable was a tiny little plugin a person was making millions from because confluence simply lacked some key fundamental func. So you have to wonder, how in the world did they get their foot in the door? I (prgm mgr) became a demigod of sorts after I was able to do "magical" basic func using their REST API.

Bottomline, if you're looking to get into enterprise and you have no connections, and no industry standing (your partners in crime and/or an industry leader in a specific field) you will never break in... never. This is why many startups are emphasizing by saying s/he worked at FAANG which for whatever reason makes them god in their field and should be taken seriously regardless of their position.

If you're trying to do cold calling, best to do is at tradeshows which IT people love going to. They get treated like royalties and get "kickbacks."

However now with the advent of social media, if you can make a splash with some specific viral video that spotlights your product. You could get noticed and get your foot in the door.

Another demo you can hit if you're B2B are SMB's. They usually lack the big boy's connections and are willing to take a risk in reducing cost, overhead, personnel and infra costs.

Finally, if you're B2C product, then your best and only bet is social media engagement with an influencer.

I'm sorry for you to think you'll get notice from enterprise procurement here in HN. Personally i don't think it will happen. I think most of us are either bored dev's, retired or bored non-influencers. Those people you so desperately want attention from, treats their work strictly 8-5 and do cocktail parties with visibility to sell themselves. Sorry, they are not scouring the web for best solutions. They are looking for best solutions for themselves which does not mean best for company. Think if you're trying to get T rump's attention, you have a choice: cheap fast food now with diet coke or showcase best in class enterprise sw that will save money, time and people's lives? Which do you think he will pay attention to?

However, having said that, you can make it into the fray by yes, focusing on niche. Case Study: Stripe. They focused on reducing painpoints for webdev's. Once they got traction with an army of webdev's. That got the VC's attention, VC's joined in giving Stripe connections to decision makers and rest is history. If you feel you got what people who build things need to reduce their cost/pain expeditiously. Then you need to be in that dev's viewpoint; Stackoverflow, Medium articles and all other dev landing zones; DZone etc.

Good luck.

Happy to see you in my thread again, thanks for jumping in.

And thanks for so much insight once more. A lot to think about.

I am actually looking here on HN exactly for this. Experience told by people like you to get a new perspective and new data.

It's a lot to digest and process, so I don't have much smarter answer than this. Again thanks a lot!

Hey, thanks for sharing your observations, this is one of the most realistic take on making business here on HN I've read in a while, really great info.

thanks. yeah a lot of angst and resentment here. I was truly naïve when I came to CA/adulthood. I thought.. wow. Kool stuff interesting people, best ideas. To my disappointment, behind the curtains were very manipulative very very small boy's club. If you want to see something realistic, watch the fictionalized docudrama: The Social Network starting at time 9:00mins The ivy league clueless boys have the connections, coders have the idea/product/dedication to their craft however clueless. What zuck got right was the right mentors who also happen to make an accidental killing. Just truly sad how things work. No diff in any industry however.

There was one partnership that did work. Primarily I suspect due to lack of "Ivy league" connections: Steve Jobs/Woz. Two very naïve but smart people lacking the not yet tainted by the ivy leaguers created an empire built on good foundation. Albeit Jobs could have been nicer ;) I worked in his environment and he was scary as you see him on shows dramatized or not. Met him in hallways/cafe.. he never ever smiled but did worship him. He knew what to steal, how to exploit then productize to make people happy. Honestly, 90% of the products he facilitated would never have seen the light of day. Case and point: Xerox's mouse and desktop.