> But "consulting" is toxic to the species of startup we talk about on HN. FWIW, we grew out of a consultancy into a more HN-compatible startup through precise

> But "consulting" is toxic to the species of startup we talk about on HN. FWIW, we grew out of a consultancy into a more HN-compatible startup through precisely the path you describe. Most of our investors, who are traditional get-big-or-go-home investors, see our "consultative sales" as an asset, not a liability. In particular, having that as a backstop is very useful for achieving PG's prime directive of startups, i.e. "don't die". My understanding is that Heroku's origin story was similar (growing out of a Rails-app consulting shop). So there's definitely room for interpolating between the two if one is so inclined.