One of the most difficult parts about being a freelancer in any industry is letting people know you’re available for work. Posting your services on social media or pitching them to companies is one way to get the word out. But two independent Chicago software developers found another way.
Sean Crowe, 27, and Thomas Gorczynski, 26, self-taught coders, created a freelance client base by sitting in coffee shops around the city with stickers on their laptops that say “I code. Hire me.” When they started doing this in 2015, they were specializing in mobile development, building iOS apps, but have since expanded their services.
“There’s bound to be people who need developers, so why not advertise that?” Crowe said. “We started selling our coding services and we made more money in that first week than we did in the previous two years.”
Some of their first clients included rock-climbing gym First Ascent and Campbell Soup Company. Gorczynski said the sticker alone has helped them generate more than $250,000.
But as they built their client base, the workload became overwhelming. To deal with the massive amount of business, they launched their own software development firm in 2016. Called Hacksmith Labs, the firm now employs 10 full-time developers, and works with clients like SoulCycle, Budweiser and Roc Nation. Hacksmith also does work for local tech startups, such as fintech company Clockwork and global subscription billing service Cleverbridge.
Crowe and Gorczynski originally met in 2011 while attending Miami University in Ohio. Gorczynski was studying electrical engineering, while Crowe was studying business, information systems and entrepreneurship.
Shortly after meeting, they launched their first startup, Hutster, which they described as the “rent.com” for off-campus student housing.
“We pretty much realized that we never wanted to get jobs after that,” Crowe said. “We got really addicted to the technology industry.”
After graduation, they moved to Chicago and initially continued building Hutster, but eventually shut it down. To keep up with the tech industry in the city, they networked with local Miami alumni, which almost always led to freelance work.
“Every time we would meet people in the tech industry here, we would end up doing some website work for them,” Crowe said. “That was kind of the start of us figuring out how to code.”
Even now with their own agency, Crowe and Gorczynski still work out of local coffee shops with the stickers on their laptops. They can often be found at First Sip Cafe in Uptown and the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs in Lakeview.
To share their story and those of other Chicago techies, Crowe and Gorczynski launched a podcast this month. The first episode is an interview with Jason Tillery, the co-founder and CTO of Buildout, a Chicago-based commercial real estate SaaS company that’s raised $8.3 million in venture capital funding.
“The whole purpose is to interview all of the really cool tech people that we’ve met here in Chicago,” Crowe said. “It’s our goal to share as many Chicago tech leaders’ stories as possible.”
