mcook08

I was in an interview process with a company for an architect position. I was very up front that I was more suited for CTO positions which they didn’t have open and I’d only be willing to work a few hours/week as I started my own business. They wanted that role full-time but mentioned an RFP would be coming out soon from their leadership team.

I don’t generally think RFPs are a good fit (we’ve filed out a few since and haven’t seen much response). If you can get RFP with a relationship then you might have a chance.

There’s lots of aggregators (sam.gov for example) but I’d recommend your local jurisdictions (city, county, state) - check their websites and see if any proposals fit your style. Often, locals get preferential consideration.

3 quick (and true) stories that helped me when I was in a similar situation (started my own thing in 2024). Currently have 6 clients and 9 employees (which wasn’t the plan!)

1. Embrace the bizarre. You need your first client, not a repeatable go to market motion. Once you have a client, you can begin to work on getting clients and figuring out what type of work you want to do longer-term. My first client was a friend who owned a business, knew enough about technology to scratch the surface and was willing to pay $5k for me to coach him. He had to write all the code and I agreed to monthly coaching until he was able to get his site in production. Terrible economics but earned real money and that’s the point of your first client - it legitimizes you. 2. Tell true stories. Did you meet with a prospect yesterday? It’s much more compelling to open your conversation about something real that happened instead of words on a page. Your website looks like every other AI consulting website. No shade, mine does too. Website is unlikely to be a major source of business. Don’t lie to yourself that adding features to your site is investing in your business growth until you are getting new leads from it. 3. The question you should be asking is how do I get my 2nd, 3rd and 4th clients because otherwise you have just traded being an employee with benefits for ‘freedom’ and utter dependence on your single client. Again, embrace all the strategies. My 2nd client came from responding to an RFP - something I’d never done in my career. 3rd client came from a referral from 2nd client. 4th client came from a friend who knew I did tech and need some help to bring a project to life. None of it makes sense in hindsight, but the point is that you learn by doing. Every client teaches you something about the type of business you want to become.

Bonus tip: read books. Not because they have the formula that you will use, but because they have the best ideas written down. Some combination of those ideas is likely your path to success. Reading books has far greater return than shorter forms (social media and dare I say HN comments). Bizarrely, the most impactful book I read is one called The Prosperous Coach which is about an entirely different business system than anything I do.

> Studies indicate that hospitals led by doctors, sports teams by star players, and universities by researchers outperform those led by non-experts

This is a bold point with only a vague reference to studies. I’m more familiar with sports teams than the other domains but star players who manage successful teams is an exception, not a rule. A few famous examples are Michael Jordan and Derek Jeter - both were legends playing their sports and have yet to participate in building successful teams at the management level.

Simple hack that has helped me is changing “todo” to “maybedo”. It reminds me that at some point I thought whatever task was worth doing but gives me the freedom to do something else as needed. Most weeks, I make a “maybedo” list at the beginning of the work week on my whiteboard and erase items as they get completed. Erasing is just as satisfying as crossing off and keeps me out of the hyper-evaluative state of comparing how many things I’ve done vs where I started.

Really useful guide for getting playwright going.

I’m a Dad who grew up in the 80s and the problem is us, the parents. My parents didn’t push me to get into computing, I just found it fascinating. If we try to find things like gentle introductions, it’s likely to get more kids to a base level familiarity but all of the real learning was in reading a 256 page manual as an 8 year old so I could get StarCraft to work on my highly custom rig. Parents as the driving force simply won’t work. Ask your kids what they are interested in and let them struggle with the problem for hours (days even) and they’ll be better for it than anything you could possibly install or provide to them.

Could your parents navigate DOS? Mine sure couldn’t but it didn’t stop me from learning.

What a fun game and awesome write up! I've been considering building my own card game variation and this encouraged me to dive in and do it. I loved your balance of engineering/product/marketing/game theory throughout the article. Given the success, have you tried to monetize it at all?

There's no ignoring how the pictures can look externally. For example, I never imagined myself wearing a rucksack for fitness. In my experience though, the community is filled with men from all walks of life, political views, etc. I suppose like any group, its local membership is what most defines your experience. I've personally met lots of guys that I would have never met at church, work, etc because I worked out with them at F3.

F3 https://f3nation.com

I was feeling very lonely working remote. We moved to a Memphis TN to be closer to family and I was struggling with feeling like an outsider. I grew up playing sports and tried CrossFit but hated paying so much for a gym. F3 workouts are free and I thought I was going for the fitness aspect, but the fellowship is what really stuck. Guys hung out after workouts and it was great to meet so many guys from so many different walks of life.

Journaling has fundamentally changed my life in almost every measurable facet. It is the single habit I can point to that helped me accomplish things like in my personal life - stop biting fingernails, run a marathon, run the Boston marathon, be a more engaged Dad. It has also helped diagnose lots of professional patterns - good bosses, bad bosses, understanding that everyone has value and has flaws.

My approach is to read journal entries written on this date from previous years. For example, this morning, I read what I wrote on 5/16/20, 5/16/21, 5/16/22.

I wrote down my methodology here: https://mcook.fun/journaling

Tilled | Remote US | Software Engineer | Tilled.com | Full-time Payment facilitation as a service

Stack: Angular Typescript NestJS Postgres

I’m looking for someone with proven Angular skills who wants to lead our front end development. This role has significant autonomy and the opportunity to work across the stack. We’ve raised capital, compensate competitively and offer stock options. We’re remote first (I’m in TN, company headquarters are CO and we are open to any US cities).

About Tilled: Tilled exists to empower software vendors, marketplaces, and SAAS companies to start generating revenue from accepting credit cards. With our suite of powerful financial tools and industry leading revenue sharing programs, Tilled will power the financial backend of the next generation of marketplaces, SAAS companies, and independent software vendors, allowing them to focus on their core product, not payment facilitation. Welcome to PayFac-as- a-Service!

Contact me (Matt Cook, VP Eng) directly at [email protected]

Tilled | Remote US | Software Engineer | Tilled.com | Full-time Payment facilitation as a service

Stack: Typescript NestJS Postgres Angular

About Tilled: Tilled exists to empower software vendors, marketplaces, and SAAS companies to start generating revenue from accepting credit cards. With our suite of powerful financial tools and industry leading revenue sharing programs, Tilled will power the financial backend of the next generation of marketplaces, SAAS companies, and independent software vendors, allowing them to focus on their core product, not payment facilitation. Welcome to PayFac-as- a-Service! This is an exciting time to join as the company goes live with its first customer, and to be part of the early launch team.

Essential Job Functions: • Create, develop, deploy and maintain Tilled services • Design and implement highly reliable, fault tolerant systems • Collect and visualize detailed telemetry data to continuously improve systems • Advance and adhere to high quality coding practices – unit testing, pair programming • End-to-end responsibility – continuously monitor and improve the services you create • Promote an engineering team culture that is always learning, motivated and collaborative • Work with a variety of technologies – Typescript, Angular, NodeJS

We're looking for someone with proven front-end skills and interested in working across the stack.

Contact me (Matt Cook, VP Eng) directly at [email protected]

I’ve been working on a project to allow anyone to get paid for their time. It requires they have some knowledge that someone else is willing to pay for but it might help. Free for hosts. BuyTime.co

Hope your friend finds success!

One overlooked factor is the modern consumer being desensitized to advertising. This created huge advantages in the last 50 years but modern consumers see so much advertising that they are largely immune to it.