The startup freelancer

Startups are cash-poor, prone to bankruptcy, and full of insane deadlines requiring people to pull small miracles just to make payroll.<p>Would love to hear more about what makes them ideal freelance clients. As a former contractor&#x2F;freelancer, I specifically made a point of staying far, far away from these kinds of clients.

I am in the exact same line of work as the author. I can&#x27;t imagine working the way he describes.<p>It&#x27;s great that he&#x27;s made this lifestyle work for him, but I&#x27;m not convinced I&#x27;d like to be one of his clients. A technology company with a developer on staff one day per week? Coordinating a project is difficult enough when everybody is full-time. (&quot;Sure thing, I&#x27;ll tackle that bug in six days&quot; is not a recipe for a functional sprint.)<p>My solution has been to charge hard at whatever milestone I&#x27;ve committed to, working as a de facto team member, and then taking the next month off. This works well with my lifestyle, since I try to take each project in a new city and I live cheaply.<p>What I would say to the author: you want fulfilling? Participate in the optimistic urgency of a new tech venture fully - then take your time off when you&#x27;ve finished. If you can&#x27;t afford to spend that much time away from developing your startup, then how can you expect your clients to wait while you take time off from theirs?

I think startups are a viable option for many types of freelancers now.<p>I&#x27;ve been freelancing in mentoring start-ups for the last 6 months. Everyone told me startups have no money and that it&#x27;s a fruitless pursuit but here i am talking to 1 new startup almost every single day.<p>I always give them the first session free (no time limit) and more than two-thirds come back for a paid session.<p>I&#x27;ve mentored around 60 startups in the last 3 months alone (all around the globe).<p>Most fun i&#x27;ve ever heard. Incredibly rewarding. In fact, i&#x27;m now working on building an actual mentoring platform.<p>I spend the rest of my time consulting small to medium size companies.

I am amazed that you can get by on 10 hours of work per week.

I&#x27;m also thinking about doing some freelance work right now.<p>One thing I&#x27;m unsure about is if it&#x27;s wise to do consulting in the same space my startup is in (fitness &amp; health data aggregation and analysis), or if I should stick to unrelated technical work (java, elasticsearch, angularjs), to avoid potential trouble with non-compete agreements and such.

I&#x27;ve been doing this for the past 7 years, from big data to social sites, to single page apps to chat&#x2F;video applications and more. I have to say its been the best way to learn about different technology and to solve new problems. Also the fast pace environment is something I like.

(You may wish to remove the &#x27;Welcome to Ghost&#x27; post on your blog)

How do you find these clients? I ve done this kind of work arrangement, and like it, but replicating this kind of arrangement doesnt seem to be so easy, at least to me.