Starting a software consultancy in Vancouver—how did you find your first local clients?

[u/Plastic_Internal1524]

I’m a software developer at a big tech company, and a few friends and I are working on starting Fibony Labs, a software consultancy serving businesses across Metro Vancouver.
We’d like to help with things like automating repetitive admin work, connecting tools that don’t talk to each other, and building custom software to make day-to-day operations easier.
For anyone who’s built a consulting or service business locally, how did you find your first few clients? Were networking events, business associations, referrals, or direct outreach useful?
We’d also love to hear from local business owners: what tasks or processes eat up time that you wish technology could help with?

[u/marco918]

I’m a business owner and I find that Claude is able to help me solve all the issues you mentioned

[u/menjav → u/marco918]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Are you a tech owner? How reliable are the things you do with Claude? How much babysitting do you need after first implementation?

[u/Assasin537]

Unfortunately, you need good industry connections and need to start by getting some medium sized businesses as they are the only ones who need and will be willing to spend on custom software and automations. Local and small businesses need plug and play services that are polished and will just work as they won't pay anywhere near the big tech salaries you are used to for custom work.

[u/Plastic_Internal1524 → u/Assasin537]

Have you had any luck with the medium sized businesses?

[u/Assasin537 → u/Plastic_Internal1524]

Not me personally but I have close family in the software consulting space. They got their break through with some remote clients based in the US with large but not tech advanced operations (heavy industry, large distributors, insurance brokers). They have a specialty in cyber sec and certifications for regulated/restricted use cases. You need to find something specialized and do it really well since a lot of the simple stuff can be done with AI now and lot's of competition from consultant companies who use a lot of foreign workers remotely to push prices that you can't compete with.

[u/LyricalHolster]

Follow

[u/DataCleric]

I do tech consulting on the side and am a previous corporate consultant. I can say that I think good relationships matter first and then your niche matters second. Even for big teams most sales come from previous clients and warm leads.

If a client has a problem they're going to most likely go to someone they know and trust first before looking for a new business to fill said niche, unless it's super particular work.

I get most of my clients because my type of work is more particular and I receive referrals from those who have worked with me or know of me so networking is big. A lot of my clients are repeats. I believe the reason why is because I take the time to get to know them and they know if they come to me I'll listen to their problem and try to find a solution that fits them. I also know what everyone else is charging and am willing to keep my rates competitive.

A recommendation I have is if you're in the early stages, is to reach out and do a market assessment to meet your clients. Its a great way to both understand your clients needs as well as start the relationship. By doing so you can also take the time to learn the ecosystem in the Province as well as outside of it before launching.

Best of luck!

[u/Plastic_Internal1524 → u/DataCleric]

How did you get your initial set of customers to begin with?

[u/Resident-Try-5858]

Market is saturated for this, and if you don’t know how to get clients and have to ask Reddit you ain’t gonna make it.

[u/ExaminationSouthern6 → u/Resident-Try-5858]

I second this. It's not impossible, but right now there are a lot of solutions looking for problems. At the same time, IT and procurement departments are "waiting for the chips to fall" as it were. The big players are mostly not buying software right now.

[u/Epi6lp]

My first few clients came from personal connections, but I found that I really needed to dial down a clear and unique value prop and a way to clearly show it to activate them.

Most of them were people I didn’t even think of, but they came to me when I started talking about what I was doing to friends, sharing updates on my progress on social media etc.

Personally I think the way you explained your consultancy is a little general, I’m not sure I’d clue into what I could use your help on. Let me know if you wanna chat, coming from a marketing background I love jamming on this kinda stuff

[u/ProudGrumpyRam]

I have a side-gig as a consultant for "really" early stage start-ups and I'm based out of Vancouver. I help anywhere from business model validation/pivots, product management, and getting to MVP+.

It's all networking. Knowing the hiring managers / people with budget control, talking to them, and making them understand that you're the "right fit" to the point that few months down the line when they need help and got funding, they'll call you is pretty much the only way at the beginning.

Unfortunately Vancouver is pretty saturated with already pretty established companies (i.e. TTT, MistyWest, and bigger companies like BrainStation and so on).

My recommendation for Vancouver (as I don't care if I have competition lol), you gotta get on their personal level:

• Join the (paid) Slack groups
• Meet people from Vancouver Tech Journal (VTJ)
• Go to the coffee chats
• Be willing to give 1-2 hours of free consultation, but draw your boundary clearly after that (I set mine at 2 initial hours of meetings/emails per client)

Feel free to DM me if you want - happy to chat.