Niche - Early Founders + Deep Tech Vision - Solve problems with high velocity (speed and direction), most likely we will get a single shot
Consultancy for me is to be in the trenches and get the work done. Consultants should have experiences and knowledge required to lead towards the success of a goal.
Experience comes from dealing with the same or similar problem statements. Experience is doing, putting in the work to solve the problem - mentally and physically. The mental component is nuanced in terms of how a problem is seen, how a solution is explored, how an impact is defined, how a plan is sketched, and how people are rallied to its cause.
Services
- Product Management (Zero to One and Beyond)
- Product Design and Engineering: Prototypes and MVP (Zero to One: from idea till you get the first customer)
- Sales (Zero to One and Beyond)
Go To Market
Target Market
- Companies with Zero to One goals
- Indie Hackers looking to outsource non core tasks
Need
- Optimise operational costs: Want to get work done at lesser costs than hiring
- Improve internal productivity by letting non core tasks be handled outside the company
- Improve success rate: Outsource experience from outside when lacking internally
Avoid
- Any big development work which will delay timelines and risk losing momentum
- Building a team, instead can always take advise from them. If clients are specifically looking for team members with a fixed set of experience, can figure out then. Maybe I’ll relay it to another consultant with sales cost.
- Main goal is to build products of our own, so avoid services beyond cash flow creation mechanism
- Do not build an agency, this is supposed to be a consultancy
USP
- Vision to be in the trenches with them
- A mixed skillset of product, engineering, and sales that would matter for a zero to one company
What will they pay for?
Companies who wish to hire consultants would look for experience, references and pricing.
Experience
- Frameworks they align with or find familiar
- Case Studies similar to their products
References: ways to build social proof and trust
- Advisors: have other people we have worked with to share their feedback/recommendations.
- Social References: Having known socially across key platforms like X or LI with mutuals
Pricing
- Flexibility - plug and play model, de-risk capital costs and working capital
- Low Costs than hiring - save recruitment and markup for full time hiring
Website
Since this is a single person consultancy and not an agency - I think its best to have only a Portfolio. The Trenchmen firm however can focus on in house product development.
So me as a consultant works on Trenchmen products. Trenchmen has advisors and details on what the product is. However it does not have any case studies or frameworks. Those are personal to me and go to the portfolio website. Any case studies or frameworks only written by advisors go onto Trenchmen - collaboration with me can go onto Portfolio as well as Trenchmen.
Will it be difficult for potential clients to jump between websites?
- All writing can be hosted onto Garden (which is a blog) which acts as my CMS.
- As long as relevant redirection links are pointing properly to Garden and it is uptime and able to handle traffic - there should be no issues.
So the potential clients will be receiving: https://www.pranavmandhare.com/
What should be included in this website?
excluding what is already present
Phase 1
- The website should have case studies for past experiences:
- Keep the Work, Learning, and Adventure as categories/pages instead of filters. Work selected by default.
- Work can have tags that will help apply relevant filters for consulting,
- type of text - frameworks, case studies
- length of text - essay, shorts
- skill - sales, engineering, product
- type of product - b2b, b2c, industry
- More Reading
- Website is too much of scroll, find a better design
- Rolling references in hero section
Phase 2
- Add content to Learning Category
- Add Books section
Phase 3
- Add content to Adventure Category
Content Strategy
Quantified frameworks and cases in the form of shorts that are delivered with design that instills confidence and trust.
Frameworks Having good first principles is my strong point - I should write about frameworks, how to tackle a problem, how to implement a solution, how to track and reiterate.
Cases I already have some personal projects built - I need to break them down into multiple problem statements to define how we solved them.
Shorts Readers have less time to read and lesser attention - best to have 3-4 paragraph blinks/shots instead of essays. Great if readers can swipe through them like inshorts.
Quantity Quantification is the most important - its easy to grasp and conclude its value. Also it reduces the number of words.
Trust and Confidence Intelligent design - necessary to generate trust, confidence, creativity in the reader
Lead Generation Strategy
Phase 1 Goal is to get quick clients and gain momentum/cash flows
Onboard Advisors: Not actively working, but people with specific skillsets that will help me deliver solutions effectively. Advisors could have a quote.
- they can act as reference
- they can build confidence if on the website
- the case studies will be more refined with their experience
Ensure Money-Authority-Need: Reach out based on explicit interest which means it is publicly known that leads require a particular job to be done. Make sure they have money and authority as well.
Start Manually and Automate: An automated system could send me a list of top 5 potential clients to reach out. Better to have reach out manual to bring the human warmth. Avoid all forms of AI written reach out - AI can help plan best way to reach out, the delivery should happen through human.
Platforms
- Join Slack or Discord Groups: Indie Hacker communities, product hunt
- Search across X and Linkedin with keywords
- Look at job portals for contract based or consultancy requirements: Remote Ok, Wellfound, Naukri, etc
- Participate more: Join community discussions