
Funding your startup with a "one week on, three weeks off" consulting setup - scootklein
http://blog.statuspage.io/funding-your-startup-with-a-one-week-on-three-weeks-off-setup
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tptacek
Another way to approach this is to start a consulting business full-time, and
use it as a springboard for whatever product idea strikes your fancy once
you're established. As in, later; like, maybe a year later.

It's true that it's hard to balance consulting and product as a bootstrapping
product startup. I used to get hung up on trying to explain how doable it is
while acknowledging the pitfalls. Now I think, if you're not sure which way to
go, put aside the product and just get a consulting practice up and running.
Don't try to balance it. Don't worry about how you'll fit product into it.

I think you'll find that starting a product (or multiple products!) from a
consulting practice is much, much easier than trying to do it by quitting a
full-time W2 job. Meanwhile, probably about 40% of the work you do in your
consulting practice is going to apply directly to your product company ---
you'll learn to sell, to bill clients, to hire, to run payroll, and (most
importantly) how to work with your team members.

~~~
rubyrescue
That was my plan, then i ended up with 30 consultants. Now I'm just really
enjoying running a consulting business!

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tptacek
Obviously, there are worse failing modes than ending up running a company you
love. :)

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EGreg
I think that the progression is usually:

full time employee -> part time contractor -> consultant with own clients ->
own team and agency -> your own startup

investors can short circuit this, but this is how many companies including
37signals started

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stevenklein
Scott and I were able to pretty much jump from full time employee to the 1
week on -- 3 week off model. We did have one client in between that was just a
4 week job. The only reason we were doing consulting was to bankroll us while
we worked on our product -- so we pretty much skipped the own clients and
team/agency step.

I do think most people probably took the route you described though.

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jyu
It'd be great if you could give some more details around finding and arranging
work with this ideal client. It doesn't seem likely that this was your first
interaction with the client. What was your relationship before you guys quit
your job? How did you initially get in touch with them?

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deleted_account
Guide to Starting a (Really) Successful Business:

Step 1: Start a successful business.

Step 2: Use the money from step one to start your _really_ successful
business.

Step 3: Profit

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aymeric
I like this concept but it is a client that can cater for this schedule.

I work three days a week as a consultant and the rest of the week I work on my
product <http://weekplan.net>

Yes you have to context switch a bit, but you can deal with urgent stuff for
both the client and your product on an ongoing basis.

It is easier to find a client that is ok for you to work only three days a
week, and this is very important because it makes finding clients easier and
therefore you re not distracted from your product.

Also because I can't work on my product for three days, it gives me some
perspective on what I am doing and recharge the motivation battery constantly.

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penguin_gab
My team and I also tried this same approach for my mobile education startup -
but differently.

The issue with working one week on, and three weeks off is that the client is
willing to accommodate you flying off the radar for three weeks, and that
makes it hard for them to plan their product according to your timing.

What we tried at App Ninja was to work a normal six day week, 12 hours a day.
We would work on our product for the first 8 hours of the day, and the
remaining 4 hours, we will work on our client projects.

I am an iOS developer and am fluent with web backends. So I was doing
everything from iOS development to Ruby on Rails web apps. We charged by the
project instead of hourly, and at one point in time, I actually earned USD
$2,000 in 4 hours by completing a project in that time span.

If you work fast, charging by the project, instead of hourly can actually be
beneficial.

We did this for almost 5 months to get our product off the ground, and other
than being absolutely physically exhausting, it worked pretty well. Our
clients were none the wiser, as we still delivered projects on time and on
schedule.

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Kiro
Working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week sounds hard. How did you manage?

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penguin_gab
We didn't really manage it well, and it was not sustainable beyond a year.

I remember feeling stressed out and exhausted all the time, having to manage
client expectations and still keep working on my product.

What I would do is that I would start work at 12 p.m. everyday, and work until
12 a.m. from Monday to Saturday. Then I would crash on Sunday, and repeat the
cycle.

We did this from Dec 2012 till end of Apr 2013, until our product was bringing
in at least consistently four-figures a month, and we drastically scaled back
on client work.

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tempi35
Sometime if you're not a hacker or you're one but want to focus on your
startup, then taking a less "serious" job can do the trick also. I've met
we've guys that even worked night shifts in security and coded all day long.
Others did even customer support from home. Got the bills paid while they
build their project. Getting a $4K a month client is something that's can take
considerable amount of time to achieve.

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magnet_ball
To me that seems a very good idea. Doing security at a place where you don't
have to be on guard at all times (something like a receptionist job) means you
can work on your product and get paid to do it with some distractions.

~~~
tempi35
That's exactly what he has done. The thing is that he was a team leader in a
large tech company, and could earn something like 6x in compared to the money
he earned in security, if he got a full time job. But he told me that with a
full time job he can't possibly develop anything for himself.

But that's not always an easy thing to do when you are 35 as he was.

