Thanks everyone for the feedback, it's a very lonely journey at the moment (although I'm lucky to have very supportive family/friends and HN :).
Some more context ...
(1) The projects are split between three Enterprise Clients, two of which I've been working with for about 10 years. I've developed Mobile Apps (originally Windows Mobile, now Android), done some integration with their ERP's, and built some Web Apps (Angular). I used to work with smaller clients, but the 80/20 applies i.e. they take up 80% of your time for 20% of your revenue. I turn down this work now.
(2) Quick story - when I first approached one of these Enterprise Clients I quoted a price of just over €10K for a small project. Another vendor laughed at me and quoted €50K. I won the business and have since made €500K from that one project. I always look long term.
(3) The work is remote. I work from home, with very little meetings. I tend to have total control over the project architecture, development, etc. They trust that I will deliver the best solution and let me get on with it.
(4) Strategically, I'm working to implementing a common stack across all projects that is robust, and allows me to deliver more efficiently. To that end, I'm moving to Xamarin (I have a core expertise in C#) for Mobile Apps, .NET Core for API's (I was using Node - great, but a pain to debug e.g. "console.log('HERE')"!!), and Angular 1.6 for Web App (although on this one, I'm not 100%. I find 1.6 mature, whereas Angular 2/4/6/or whatever it is now is a bit of a mess), and a SQL Server or Postgres DB.
Here's a curve ball - I've also been accepted onto a great startup program for a side-project I had been working on. It's also now got customers, revenue, and a great chance of success. The same week I got accepted onto the program I also heard from one of my existing clients (a multinational) enquiring about working with their sister companies in other counties to deliver the solution I recently did for them (HELP!!)
BTW - Some of you have expressed an interest in partnering up. I'm definitely interested in reaching out and have set up a temporary email address I will use to contact you. I'm not using my real email because I'm being bombarded by agencies (which I've no interest in using). I'll open up more if it looks like me could work together.
I think you are right it does come down to trust. It's no different than building a business "partnership" in my mind.
A lot of these projects tend to move very quickly, where I meet the client, spec, price, develop and deliver. It requires a lot of trust to share that with a partner and trust that they can interpret the project.
I think they can scale, but they require expertise around managing people, scaling companies, etc. Because I've forever been involved in software development I don't have those skills. At the moment it is fair to say it's a lifestyle company, but it could probably sustain two/three people.
I agree with your points. I recently reached out to a larger agency. I put to them a very small project, to get a feel of their pricing, process, etc. I estimated it would take me max 5 days. They came back with an estimation of 4 - 5 weeks!! I feel like they just stretched it out to maximise income. They really don't see the bigger picture.
I think you are spot on about learning management. I spoke with one of my mentors, and he feels I don't know how to manage because I never needed to. So it's a skills gap I have. I'm not really sure I have the time to invest in it at this point. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario.
I also raised my fees, so that now I will only discuss projects at a minimum of €10K. It definitely helped shift some of the crap :)
Site looks good, I just posted on it, so real interested to see how it goes.
I think there's a need for a site like this. Are you working on it full time?