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Some people just like to play armchair CEO I guess. Much respect to both of you though for pulling the wool back on this stuff. Question about consultancy stuf
by shostack 10y ago
Some people just like to play armchair CEO I guess. Much respect to both of you though for pulling the wool back on this stuff.
Question about consultancy stuff... In your opinion is it easier or harder to scale one vs a product business, and do you think one type is inherently easier to scale earlier on?
- tptacek 10y agoI've been a part of successful product companies but haven't founded one. The question of how to scale a product company has a very situational answer; it depends on how valuable the product is to its users and what the customer acquisition strategy is. I think it's cognitively harder, at least in business terms, to scale a product company --- you have so many more variables to play with. But I also believe what Steve Blank says about this, in the sense that once you get a good set of values for those variables, the business sort of scales itself, in the same sense that a well-designed airplane "wants" to stay in the sky. The business side of scaling a consulting company is mostly about people management and recruiting. I think they're equivalently hard from a technical perspective. Maybe a consultancy is just a little bit technically harder.
- shostack 10y agoThanks for the insight. I worked at ad agencies for a while and it made me really come to dislike service businesses and found I prefer a product company with many customers. I think I like the notion of "customers" vs. "clients." Have you found yourself to have a preference having been in both worlds? Is one inherently more enjoyable for you?