How can I break into the development business scene if I'm the new kid on the block?

Question

I'm about 1 semester short of graduating from college with my Systems Engineer degree.

I've started my own software development company here in a country in South America last week, and so far I managed to land myself a nice account. I have to build a simple enough program that will take me 6-7weeks to complete and I'll charge 2000$. 40% up front and the rest on completion.

While this is great and I'm really excited about my first project (Hell it's a landmark for any professional!), I'm already setting my eye on landing projects that will be visible for other companies to see.

I've spoken with many people in my trade around town and it seems there are two companies that manage the big accounts with other small companies scrounging around for the scraps.

How can I break this so called fellowship that is pretty much a monopoly here?

Any and all suggestions will be massively appreciated.

Answer 1

Networking, networking, networking. Make sure to make a lot of connections. They will be your leads in the future. Also, never screw a customer. Always deliver quality. Your value will grow with your reputation.

Answer 2

Nice question, I'm from South America myself.

The "monopoly" thing seems to repeat itself everywhere. But in our industry, a key weapon is innovation. You shouldn't expect to compete with well established big companies from launch anyways, but that should be your goal.

I'm still making my first steps to build my own thing, since I've been an employee ever since I started on the software industry.

But doing the best job you can with your products, working on keeping your employees (which seems like a though thing down here, mostly with multinational corporations "hunting" programmers all around) and perfectioning your team and work, is probably a right way to go.

Try getting involved in community events, make yourself visible (Stackoverflow is a good place I guess :) ), do the best you can building software. Joel and Jeff seem like good referrers on the subject.

Maybe this could be a community wiki question.