Tuesday 12 July 2011

Consulting harms your chance at founding startups?

Consulting is like selling crack. If you get hooked on the consulting lifestyle (and income), it can be hard to give that up to work on your own startups, yet many people get into consulting with the dream of working on their own projects on the side.

Yet it seems that consulting work can actually be detrimental to your startup-founding prospects. Read more from the original article

I have to admit I've fallen foul of this myself. It's very hard to prioritise spending a lot of time on a "maybe it'll go nowhere" startup, if you've got definite paid work to do right now (especially if it's well paid). In my case, my startup is MatchFounders, a site dedicated to matching potential founders for startups.

When prioritising, the "bird in the hand" mentality kicks in automatically - and there's a lot to be said about that particular proverb. But I also have to think hard about whether or not I'm selling my long-term future for short-term cash results.

It's not an easy choice to make, by any stretch.

Just how much do I want to work my own startup (and build something for the future) vs current, well-paid consulting.

Don't hold your breath for an answer - I'll probably struggle with this for a long time. But it has served as a reminder that I also have my own ideas on the boil - and should maybe give a little more love on their behalf.

What about you? Are you struggling to make the choice? Have you already made it? Do you have any advice?

2 comments:

itsgucci said...

your startup needs a consultant.

no, but seriously, the css is atrocious when i visited the site. ff5 mac.

Taryn East said...

Yeah I know. *blush*

I need to fix that.

What my startup needs is somebody with actual time to spend working on it (the budget is currently zero dollars and almost as many hours).

Thanks for pointing it out, though. I'm assuming you're mostly referring to the weird thing it does with the radio-buttons. That's been pointed out to me by others. I use FF5 on Ubuntu and it isn't a problem for me... so it's hard to tell what I need to do to fix that. If there are any other obvious problems - let me know and I'll add them to the TODO list.