freelancing, bootstrappingWe are a startup which we bootstrapped from scratch two years ago. We started as a team of two but now we are a team of 6. Cash flow has always been good and never had any problems in getting more clients. (Mostly freelancer and elance based clients). Now my question is that road ahead could be that we can keep adding employees and keep this graph of linear growth or should we start focusing on products? And also , currently we are a Pakistan based startup but most of our clients are U.S.A based so should we start thinking about getting a virtual office in U.S.A with the possibility of bidding in front of larger companies for bigger projects? Is that even possible or am barking up the wrong tree?
First off, note that you’re not a startup. You’re a service company.
Startups are about growth at scale, and there’s no way to grow a service company at scale. If anything, service company is where you start, to make ends meet, and in some cases ultimately end up, to avoid going broke (think IBM).
With that out of the way, the best means to grow a business at scale is to sell products. In other words, stop selling custom made websites or apps or what have you, and instead focus on that one or more particular plugin, theme, module, component, library, turn key solution, or what have you – those things you’re really good at. Anything short of that won’t scale. Be sure to find a market before proceeding to go all in.
The next best thing is productized services. Package your service into a deliverable (e.g. an SEO report) and ship that for a flat rate, essentially turning it into a not that scalable but still a lot more scalable than custom made product.
As to a virtual office in the US, beware of the potential SEO implications of abusing having many. Also be wary of what happens when someone with a grudge starts posting pics of the scratch-your-eyes-out-ugly hangar you purportedly are operating out of – rest assured that it’ll appear in google image results and your credibility will head straight to zero in no time if it’s ugly as sin and a prospective client googles your address as part of their due diligence.
If you mean business in the US or in the EU, either stick to doing remote work or actually recruit someone there to be an interface between your clients and your offshore operations. Both options have merit. The former is borderline risk-free as you already know, and will land you many clients that are looking for cheap labor; the second is riskier, but will land you with higher profile clients with larger projects. (There also are tax implications in the case of the EU, depending on the country you’re based in – e.g. Malta, Cyprus, or Luxembourg.)
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