4 ms·

At that point you are basically just an investor in the project - since you will need to focus your time and energy on consulting and won't be able to contribut

by javery 15y ago

At that point you are basically just an investor in the project - since you will need to focus your time and energy on consulting and won't be able to contribute as a co-founder.

DuncanIdaho 15y ago
How about training a replacement? On the other hand - if you are lucky enough to run into people who are better at executing than you are - then funding them seems like the smartest thing to do, should they want to work with you that is.
tptacek 15y ago
What does this even mean? People aren't chess pieces. Just because you walk two spaces to the left and one space forward, doesn't mean you're a knight for the rest of the time you're at the company. Contribute to your product offering as much as you can. Participate in discussions. Talk to customers. If you're lucky, your consulting customers and your product prospects will overlap. Over time, ramp up revenue so that you can wean yourself off consulting. This attitude that there's some status hierarchy of kinds of people in a startup is toxic. Working companies are comprised of people who will move mountains to get stuff done. You can spend tons of time pushing on the mountain of external funding, or you can push on the mountain of getting immediate and comfortable levels of cash from consulting. Both have their upsides and downsides. Either way: you're going to have to do stuff you wouldn't otherwise want to do.
- javery 15y ago
  What I mean is that you will be so focused and busy on the consulting piece you won't have the time to work on the product - trust me I have been there.
  - chronophilic 15y ago
    One shouldn't form trust based on a single anecdote.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    Me too. I'm on-and-off billable all the time. Ask my dev team how disengaged I am with the product we're launching.
- dools 15y ago
  What I mean is that you will be so focused and busy on the consulting piece you won't have the time to work on the product - trust me I have been there. Not necessarily. I product manage http://decalcms.com/ http://decalcms.com/ but don't really do much of the "actual work" on it until it's time to do a release at which point I focus a lot on the marketing. The rest of the time I drum up business, run game on support and client queries and generally keep things ticking over.

by javery 15y ago

At that point you are basically just an investor in the project - since you will need to focus your time and energy on consulting and won't be able to contribute as a co-founder.

DuncanIdaho 15y ago

How about training a replacement? On the other hand - if you are lucky enough to run into people who are better at executing than you are - then funding them seems like the smartest thing to do, should they want to work with you that is.

tptacek 15y ago

What does this even mean? People aren't chess pieces. Just because you walk two spaces to the left and one space forward, doesn't mean you're a knight for the rest of the time you're at the company. Contribute to your product offering as much as you can. Participate in discussions. Talk to customers. If you're lucky, your consulting customers and your product prospects will overlap. Over time, ramp up revenue so that you can wean yourself off consulting. This attitude that there's some status hierarchy of kinds of people in a startup is toxic. Working companies are comprised of people who will move mountains to get stuff done. You can spend tons of time pushing on the mountain of external funding, or you can push on the mountain of getting immediate and comfortable levels of cash from consulting. Both have their upsides and downsides. Either way: you're going to have to do stuff you wouldn't otherwise want to do.

javery 15y ago
What I mean is that you will be so focused and busy on the consulting piece you won't have the time to work on the product - trust me I have been there.
- chronophilic 15y ago
  One shouldn't form trust based on a single anecdote.
- tptacek 15y ago
  Me too. I'm on-and-off billable all the time. Ask my dev team how disengaged I am with the product we're launching.
dools 15y ago
What I mean is that you will be so focused and busy on the consulting piece you won't have the time to work on the product - trust me I have been there. Not necessarily. I product manage http://decalcms.com/ http://decalcms.com/ but don't really do much of the "actual work" on it until it's time to do a release at which point I focus a lot on the marketing. The rest of the time I drum up business, run game on support and client queries and generally keep things ticking over.