"My totally subjective opinion is that, if you're a freelancer or consultant, any one of these will be probably more useful than the entire rest of my blog put together."
You're right there -- I was reading the first few paragraphs and thinking "thank God I'm reading this now and not 6 months down the line". So much actionable advice.
Here's a question for you: as someone making money from both services and products, but who has avoided the VC-lottery-ticket startup game, what's your opinions on starting a service business vs starting a product business?
I'm in the early days of building an e-commerce startup while freelancing on the side. Even though my day rate is on the low end, I'm still earning more than most people my age in the UK (I just graduated), except maybe junior IB analysts, and I'm pretty confident I could earn way more, especially if I focus on freelancing^ full time. Pitch myself at a much higher level, start hiring a few people, build a service business.
^(Yeah, I know, I should say "consulting" and not "freelancing").
But the obvious downside is that a service business isn't scalable. A scalable product business is much better, if it's a success. Plus Steve Jobs and Elon Musk would never have made the history books, or had the same impact on humanity, if they'd sold services instead of products -- but they're the 0.001%. What's your opinion?
what's your opinions on starting a service business vs starting a product business?
I like celery, and I like peanut butter, and despite them not being obvious complements they work together in a way better than even the sum of the delicious parts. I sort of feel the same way about products and consulting. I enjoy nothing in my work life so much as I enjoy making and marketing software. It affords me an unbelievable amount of freedom in arranging my day-to-day and month-to-month affairs. I get to pick everything I work on. Yay.
In consulting, I occasionally have to do things I don't really enjoy. (Contracts -- bah, not fun.) On the other hand, I get to work with very smart, fun, good people, which is something I genuinely miss when I'm in the BatCave working on my own stuff. The challenges are new and different as compared to working on my own stuff, and I get to take a look at something entirely novel every month or two instead of once-in-a-blue-moon. (Last big win for BCC? May-ish. Last big improvement to the state of the art, for the narrow art-field of small software devs? Hmm, years ago. Last big win for a consulting contract: last gig, and happens almost every gig. Last big improvement to the state of the art, for the narrow art-field of B2B software companies: last gig, and happens maybe every other gig.) Also, there's the money thing. I'm not terribly motivated by money, but I'm now a recently married man, and the combination of consulting + products is even more stability than products alone was.
But the obvious downside is that a service business isn't scalable.
Not scalable like Oracle/IBM/SAIC are not scalable, or not scalable like charging only $20k a week is not scalable? Because both of those strike me as accomplishing many of the goals I could ascribe to the word "scalable."
What's your opinion?
I suspect that there's a real fundamental values gap (or a vastly different collection of weights and terms in utility functions, if you swing that way) which make my opinion less useful to you than it might otherwise be.
"I suspect that there's a real fundamental values gap (or a vastly different collection of weights and terms in utility functions, if you swing that way) which make my opinion less useful to you than it might otherwise be."
I'm very curious as to what exactly you mean here. I have an inkling what you mean, but it sounds a bit like:
"So which did you prefer, Paris or India?"
"Well, they're both great, in very different ways. You like adventure and I like relaxation so my preference will be different to yours".
"But you've been to both and I haven't been to either, so I just want to hear what they're really like, and what the guidebooks don't tell you..."
I'll send you an email, would love to hear more of your thoughts if you have time.
I'm very curious as to what exactly you mean here.
Let's say there's a particular worldview, call it A, under which Musk is a heroic figure. (There are infinitely many, but pretend that we can narrow it down to one well-specified one, for the sake of illustration.) Let's call my worldview B. A and B do share occasional points of overlap, but they're very, very, very different from each other. A is, in fact, so different from B that if I describe some salient ways in which B is different, I think many people who subscribe to A would think I was intentionally picking a fight with them.
One minor codicil in B is "All else being equal, do not pick message board fights, and most especially do not pick fights on message boards at 6:30 AM in the morning."
Comments
"My totally subjective opinion is that, if you're a freelancer or consultant, any one of these will be probably more useful than the entire rest of my blog put together."
You're right there -- I was reading the first few paragraphs and thinking "thank God I'm reading this now and not 6 months down the line". So much actionable advice.
Here's a question for you: as someone making money from both services and products, but who has avoided the VC-lottery-ticket startup game, what's your opinions on starting a service business vs starting a product business?
I'm in the early days of building an e-commerce startup while freelancing on the side. Even though my day rate is on the low end, I'm still earning more than most people my age in the UK (I just graduated), except maybe junior IB analysts, and I'm pretty confident I could earn way more, especially if I focus on freelancing^ full time. Pitch myself at a much higher level, start hiring a few people, build a service business.
^(Yeah, I know, I should say "consulting" and not "freelancing").
But the obvious downside is that a service business isn't scalable. A scalable product business is much better, if it's a success. Plus Steve Jobs and Elon Musk would never have made the history books, or had the same impact on humanity, if they'd sold services instead of products -- but they're the 0.001%. What's your opinion?
what's your opinions on starting a service business vs starting a product business?
I like celery, and I like peanut butter, and despite them not being obvious complements they work together in a way better than even the sum of the delicious parts. I sort of feel the same way about products and consulting. I enjoy nothing in my work life so much as I enjoy making and marketing software. It affords me an unbelievable amount of freedom in arranging my day-to-day and month-to-month affairs. I get to pick everything I work on. Yay.
In consulting, I occasionally have to do things I don't really enjoy. (Contracts -- bah, not fun.) On the other hand, I get to work with very smart, fun, good people, which is something I genuinely miss when I'm in the BatCave working on my own stuff. The challenges are new and different as compared to working on my own stuff, and I get to take a look at something entirely novel every month or two instead of once-in-a-blue-moon. (Last big win for BCC? May-ish. Last big improvement to the state of the art, for the narrow art-field of small software devs? Hmm, years ago. Last big win for a consulting contract: last gig, and happens almost every gig. Last big improvement to the state of the art, for the narrow art-field of B2B software companies: last gig, and happens maybe every other gig.) Also, there's the money thing. I'm not terribly motivated by money, but I'm now a recently married man, and the combination of consulting + products is even more stability than products alone was.
But the obvious downside is that a service business isn't scalable.
Not scalable like Oracle/IBM/SAIC are not scalable, or not scalable like charging only $20k a week is not scalable? Because both of those strike me as accomplishing many of the goals I could ascribe to the word "scalable."
What's your opinion?
I suspect that there's a real fundamental values gap (or a vastly different collection of weights and terms in utility functions, if you swing that way) which make my opinion less useful to you than it might otherwise be.
Thanks a lot, that's very helpful.
"I suspect that there's a real fundamental values gap (or a vastly different collection of weights and terms in utility functions, if you swing that way) which make my opinion less useful to you than it might otherwise be."
I'm very curious as to what exactly you mean here. I have an inkling what you mean, but it sounds a bit like:
"So which did you prefer, Paris or India?"
"Well, they're both great, in very different ways. You like adventure and I like relaxation so my preference will be different to yours".
"But you've been to both and I haven't been to either, so I just want to hear what they're really like, and what the guidebooks don't tell you..."
I'll send you an email, would love to hear more of your thoughts if you have time.
I'm very curious as to what exactly you mean here.
Let's say there's a particular worldview, call it A, under which Musk is a heroic figure. (There are infinitely many, but pretend that we can narrow it down to one well-specified one, for the sake of illustration.) Let's call my worldview B. A and B do share occasional points of overlap, but they're very, very, very different from each other. A is, in fact, so different from B that if I describe some salient ways in which B is different, I think many people who subscribe to A would think I was intentionally picking a fight with them.
One minor codicil in B is "All else being equal, do not pick message board fights, and most especially do not pick fights on message boards at 6:30 AM in the morning."
* Last big improvement to the state of the art, for the narrow art-field of B2B software companies: last gig,*
Can I ask what the improvement was ?