>- Do you specialize in any domain further to the above (e-commerce only, for example)?

Not a domain. I like working on problems that are challenging in an algorithmical/mathematical sense. Where the solution is not necessarily "obvious". If you want to consider that a domain, then yes.

> - Do you work alone, ever outsource anything to freelancers, or maybe are more like an agency?

For now, its just me. I certainly have the dealflow and could expand it to generate work for me than just me, but the problem is quality control. Even if I had an engineer who I'd be willing to funnel contracts to, how do I make sure that he stays on top of his game/doesn't get complacent? I'm not comfortable with the idea yet and feel like maintaining reputation is more important.

I occasionally contract out some UI stuff if it has to be done, but since I bill hourly, I can't really make this work in my favor. Its at best a bit better than breaking even.

The reason I do hourly work is because people are really uneasy with project based contracts, probably because they've been burned by this kind of business too many times already. Selling hours seems to be way easier.

> - Were you ever in a situation where client was unhappy with what you have delivered? How did you handle that?

No. Part of the reason is that I'm good at what I do. A potentially bigger reason is that you have to manage expectations. Underpromise, overdeliver all the time. Customers, in general, even though they are "engineering managers" have no fucking clue how long something takes. They think building a very basic rest api takes 9 months when it takes 2 weeks. The next one thinks you can knock out a google clone in a week. Just need to educate them on what is going to happen.

If someone is truly unreasonably unreasonable or wants to pull shenanigans, I'd probably just cancel the contract and go on vacation or something. My contracts are tight and I have cash in the bank. And I can always pick up a small contract to do something fun for a little less cash. Like a startup MVP.

> - How do you find leads or how do leads find you? Do you have mostly repeat or new business?

Keep in mind that this is mostly middle management somewhere inside big corps that existed for way longer than the internet does. These folks arent necessarily tech savvy and some of them became engineering managers because they were the guy in the office who knew how to operate the company printer. They have equally well qualified engineers working for them.

These guys talk to each other. In restaurants, like normal human beings. They have friends who hold similar jobs with similar issues. Most of my business comes from such conversations. Manager A who has worked with me and everything went well talks to Manager B who has very similar issues, in that nothing works, and Manager A tells them that they know this one guy who makes things work. That's how I get leads. Weird, huh.

Keep in mind that I don't need many leads. If I do 3x4 months of work in a year, that requires probably no more than 6 qualified inbound leads in a year, excluding repeat business.

I'd say that nowadays, every 3rd contract is with a truly new customer. Repeat business is super easy because once someone hired me and suddenly software magically works, and then the contract ends and I disappear into the shadows and suddenly things slowly wither away and they tell me about it and I tell them its because reasons and then they bring me back in to solve another issue and it just works, that's like magic for them.

And you have to keep in mind that this is for usually really simple stuff like "I have this data and we have 6 guys whose entire job it is to sit in front of excel all day and maybe cant we have a computer do it?" and internally im like "that probably takes 3 hours to implement tops" and theyre like "we've got budget for 12 weeks do you think that thats possible?". At that point you have a real problem because the idea that this is going to take half an afternoon is completely outside their reality, so you have to find other things they need done. Once you've explained to them all the things they can do with 12 weeks of budget, they are mega sold. Suddenly they have a web app to which they can upload files and all their data appears as visualizations on their conference room TV or whatever and it completely blows their mind.

> - How did you get your first leads?

Basically luck. I started a company with a guy and it went somewhat well but we pulled the classic mistake of premature founding team marriage and it fell apart due to personal reasons, so the guy bought me out.

I did then bum around on upwork to look for a short-ish thing to do because I was going to have surgery 8 weeks down the line anyway. I found something in the mountains of shit that is upwork and took it from there. I guess my first contract was some kind of automated bid adjustment tool for adwords.

Most of my leads is past customers talking to new customers. You really have to accept that you are selling high literature to the illiterate, though. Lots of hand holding and management of expectations.