37Signals was initially your typical web design / development shop doing projects for customers. Consultants can roughly be considered "external, temporary emp

37Signals was initially your typical web design / development shop doing projects for customers. Consultants can roughly be considered "external, temporary employees", paid by the hour, usually by one or two clients. The web design shop will typically have a whole lot of different customers, and charge fixed price for projects. So there is a not-entirely-insignificant difference between the two. In the web dev shop, you'll probably learn more about business in general, but will work less / earn more as a consultant. I think the authors point is that being a consultant (not service company) is bad if you want to do a startup, as you get too accustomed to having lots of money and relatively low hours of work. In that sense, you can't make a direct comparison with 37Signals as they were the more traditional service company. At least in case I remember correctly :-) In any case though, consultants naturally can and do start startups. Often with less debts due to large savings.