In February 2016 I left my job at Ishi Systems. For two years I had been building Hadoop-based storage and data retention systems for telecom operators, working with remote teams in Switzerland and the US. It was good work and I learned a lot. But I wanted to build something of my own, and I didn’t have a clear plan for what came next.
What I did have was a problem every engineer who leaves a services or enterprise job runs into: almost nothing I had built could be shown to anyone. The systems belonged to the company and its customers. There was no public GitHub full of side projects, no portfolio site, no case studies. On paper, I was an engineer with good experience and zero proof.
This is the story of how one message got me past that, and what I’d tell anyone in the same position today.
One message in a Facebook group
A few days after leaving, I was scrolling through a few tech and startup groups on Facebook. Someone had posted that they were looking for a contract developer for a full-stack role.
There was nothing special about the post. It was the kind of request that gets a dozen replies with links to portfolios. I didn’t have a link to send, but I sent a direct message anyway, explaining what I had worked on and that I was interested.
He replied quickly, and asked the obvious question: could I show him some of my previous work?
The objection I couldn’t answer, so I removed it
This was the moment that could have ended the conversation. I couldn’t share my previous work. Describing confidential systems in vague terms doesn’t build much confidence, and I knew it.
So instead of trying to win the argument, I tried to remove the risk from his side of the table. I offered a simple guarantee: if he didn’t like the work, he wouldn’t have to pay for it.
He hesitated. Then he gave me a shot.
Looking back, this was the most important decision in the whole story. A buyer who asks for a portfolio isn’t really asking for a portfolio. They’re asking, “How do I know this won’t waste my time and money?” A portfolio is one answer to that question. A guarantee is another. When you can’t offer the first, you can often offer the second.
Three days instead of a week
The timing helped. They had an urgent project they wanted to show at the upcoming TechCrunch event in New York, and they had estimated it as about a week of work.
I finished it in three days.
That first project did more for my credibility than any portfolio could have. It was real work, for their real problem, delivered faster than they expected, on a deadline that mattered to them. After that, nobody asked about my previous work again.
Six months and more than $40,000
That project turned into a working relationship. Over the next six months I delivered more than $40,000 worth of work for them.
Eventually they hired a full-time person for the role, and they offered me a position too, with both cash and equity. It was a generous offer, and a few years earlier I would probably have taken it without thinking twice.
By then, though, things had changed. In March 2016 I had co-founded DataOne Innovation Labs, and we had started picking up other clients. Like many bootstrapped companies, DataOne began as a services business, building data and analytics products for clients through our network. That contract work was the bridge that made it possible. It paid the bills while we figured out what the company would become, and it gave me the confidence that people would pay for what we could build.
I said no to the job offer and kept building.
What actually made it work
It would be easy to turn this into a story about luck, or about Facebook groups being a secret sales channel. Neither is quite right. Looking back, a few things made the difference.
1. Go where buyers are already asking
I didn’t run an ad or cold email a list. I answered someone who had publicly said, “I need this.” Communities, forums, and groups are full of people describing their problems in their own words. Showing up there consistently, and replying to real requests, is still one of the most underrated ways to find your first customers.
2. When you can’t offer proof, offer a guarantee
The guarantee wasn’t a trick. It was me taking on the risk that the buyer couldn’t evaluate. That only works if you’re confident you can deliver, and it isn’t right for every deal. If the work is large or the scope is unclear, a guarantee can turn into free work. For a small, well-defined first project, it can be the fastest way to get a “yes.”
There are softer versions of the same idea: a paid trial, a fixed-price first milestone, or a pilot where part of your fee depends on an agreed outcome. All of them say the same thing to the buyer: I’m confident enough to share the risk with you.
3. Make the first project impossible to ignore
The first project is the real portfolio. If it’s late, average, or needs a lot of hand-holding, the relationship ends there. If it arrives early and solves the problem cleanly, the next project usually sells itself.
Delivering in three days instead of seven wasn’t about working all night to impress someone. It was about understanding exactly what they needed for the event and not building anything else.
4. Treat a good client as a foundation, not a destination
The job offer with equity was tempting. But I had left my job to build something of my own, and that client relationship had quietly given me what I needed to do it: income, confidence, and proof that the market valued the work.
Not every founder should turn down a good offer. But it’s worth asking whether the offer moves you toward what you actually wanted when you started, or just away from uncertainty.
If you’re where I was in 2016
If you’ve just left a job and everything you’ve built is under NDA, you’re not as stuck as it feels. You can still:
- Reply to real requests in the communities where your buyers spend time, instead of waiting for them to find you.
- Remove the risk for the first buyer with a guarantee, a paid trial, or a small fixed-price milestone.
- Pick a first project you can deliver fast and well, and let that become your proof.
- Write about what you can share: your approach, your thinking, the problems you know how to solve. That becomes the public portfolio you didn’t have.
My first client came from one message I almost didn’t send. Your next one might too.
Originally published on LinkedIn.