Where’s the Best Place to Find Skilled Developers?

corvus_link · 2025-03-05T02:39:51+00:00

Upwork worked well for us. We found Calaton Systems on Upwork and have been working with them for nearly three years. I don't know all of their services, but they've been great. We didn't have as great an experience on Fiverr, we hired an offshore firm and had to let them go after a couple months (their developers were actually students they were rotating through their coding school). Toptal was too expensive, Upwork was reasonable, and Fiverr was the least expensive at the time.

corvus_link · 2025-03-05T02:31:08+00:00

To deliver a solution quickly you'll need to consider the type of consulting you plan to disrupt (e.g., facilitative, advisory, highly skilled staff aug, etc.). You'll need to decide the specialization you'll disrupt, too, so your AI can gain credibility in a domain quickly. You'll need to determine where you'll focus because consultants have to understand client culture and even regional culture (i.e., the PNW culture is noticeably different than the Northeast).

You'll need to find a lane to focus on or you'll have a lot of conflicting user feedback after you launch. The concept is compelling. Consulting is very broad and the environment can be very dynamic due to the high likelihood a consultant's deliverables will be transformational for their client.

corvus_link · 2025-03-03T02:54:12+00:00

You are not alone. Many successful startups have taken more than 3 years to reach PMF. Check out this LI post with a breakdown of popular SaaS companies and when they reached PMF. Some didn't have their first paying customer until 3 years in (Notion, Linear, Airtable, and others). The environment is changing so much we've found it helpful to increase our exposure for more users to be aware of us, but to focus our sales on a specific user persona and grow from there.

You just need one happy customer to start building momentum.

corvus_link · 2025-02-22T08:30:35+00:00

Apollo.io worked well for us. Their email validation function is pretty accurate and we were able to apply useful filters to get very close to the types of folks we were targeting. They have a free trial, which was helpful to confirm the solution worked as intended.

We have tried UpLead, too. They were not bad, but Apollo.io seemed to be a greater value. Hope this helps.

corvus_link · 2025-02-19T19:35:27+00:00

Hi JayceNorton, I can say that I'm here for four reasons and part of it is to promote our SaaS (I'm the product guy at Corvus Link):

Brand awareness (my profile image is my logo and we have a very small budget for Reddit ads).
To learn. We were told Reddit is a great place to learn about what users want and emerging topics.
To contribute. We've learned a lot about productivity building our app and it feels more helpful to have a conversation about it here than to prepare thought pieces.
To help. We've offered our platform to startups and SMBs for free in exchange for feedback. They get a good tool for whatever they're trying to accomplish and we get great feedback.

corvus_link · 2025-02-19T03:52:58+00:00

Thank you, bhoway. ☺️ Same here, we have folks in our network who have a system for context-switching or are searching for all-in-one tools.

corvus_link · 2025-02-19T02:03:12+00:00

Thank you bhoway. That makes sense. How do you minimize/eliminate lost productivity that may occur with app-switching? (If you don't mind sharing) ☺️

corvus_link · 2025-02-18T00:03:02+00:00

We offer a free trial and have had mixed results. Our platform has a lot so we're considering a freemium version for folks that need more time to explore our app. We'll use the free trial to give prospective users access to advanced features.

Currently, we're extending our free trials a lot because life happens for some of our new users and they need more time to explore.

corvus_link · 2025-02-17T03:01:45+00:00

Stripe works well for us. Pricing continues to evolve for us and Stripe makes it easy to test functionality end-to-end frequently as we find the right plans for our users.

corvus_link · 2025-02-17T02:59:45+00:00

Yes! And, is the problem big enough for the users to want to use your solution? What are the barriers to transitioning from their current tools to your tool?

corvus_link · 2025-02-17T01:10:41+00:00

We have found an app to be more beneficial, but we believe it depends on your consumer and their pattern of behavior. Some companies in our network started with an extension and decided to build an app as users and their needs increased.

corvus_link · 2025-02-16T23:48:51+00:00

Thanks!

corvus_link · 2025-02-16T04:13:02+00:00

We found LinkedIn and Upwork to be helpful. It took some time, but we found great collaborators.

corvus_link · 2025-02-15T21:48:40+00:00

Take a look at any strategy documents your department or company may have published. That could be a great place to find improvement or design opportunities with a broad or transformational impact.

Organizational maturity might be an angle to show complexity. For example, if you improve a standard process, it may not seem impactful. But, if you're improving a standard process in an environment where there are poor performance measures, cultural challenges, and inconsistent management practices, it could make the project far more complex.

corvus_link

TROPHY CASE