4 ms·
Would you do consulting and product development simultaneously?
Would you do consulting and product development (bootstrapped) simultaneously?
I left my job to start working on my own thing (SaaS based product and bootstrapped). I had created certain prototypes and sent couple of surveys to check what the market needs. Financially I set myself certain targets before I quit and have between 18-22 months of time to sustain (for myself - with no employees and zero income). So far it looks pretty good.
My initial thought process was to do consulting + product development. Unfortunately, I have ended up taking up too many hours of consulting work for the next 9-12 months (and cutting down hours means losing it completely). And the pay is near my expectations and much better than my day job (a bit above 2.5 times). This will also significantly boost my financial savings in a short time.
BUT - I would end up with very less time to work on my own product(s). One option for me is to hire somebody to develop the product while i just do some sales/marketing and product management work (5-6 hours weekly). The other option is to quit consulting and work on the product myself full time - and then hire people later when product starts growing.
I think I may have ended up making the wrong choice by taking up too many hours of consulting assignments. (I am weak at delegation - and this may just be a fear out of that weakness.)
Have you been through this experience before? And what choices would you make?
P.S: At the moment I am not in a situation to hire somebody and not do any consulting work - In that case I'd go bankrupt within a year.
- justintocci 12y agoi envy your problem. I tried for years to consult and do product development. I made no real progress. Eventually I was able to do the product development by delegating to my kids. I think you have the resources to hire someone and manage it. If I can get two teenagers to learn programming and then produce something useful with just a few hours of help and supervision a week you should be able to manage a capable programmer through a project in five or six.
- mkal_tsr 12y agoIf you're making that much more than you were full-time (and remembering this is contract work), I would probably try to hire someone on to help ... to keep your head in the game I'd recommend you do a feature or two as well as architecture / spec. Once you've got the bare-bones done the new-hire can come on and start learning the code base as there are things to refactor, implement, test, etc. Meanwhile you're still contracting making money and in your free time you're focusing on the "fun" things of software dev.