[pixelmonkey]

Fair enough. I just looked around for other times PG talks about consulting work, e.g. from http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html,

"""The trouble with consulting is that clients have an awkward habit of calling you on the phone. Most startups operate close to the margin of failure, and the distraction of having to deal with clients could be enough to put you over the edge. Especially if you have competitors who get to work full time on just being a startup.

So you have to be very disciplined if you take the consulting route. You have to work actively to prevent your company growing into a "weed tree," dependent on this source of easy but low-margin money.

Indeed, the biggest danger of consulting may be that it gives you an excuse for failure. In a startup, as in grad school, a lot of what ends up driving you are the expectations of your family and friends. Once you start a startup and tell everyone that's what you're doing, you're now on a path labelled "get rich or bust." You now have to get rich, or you've failed."""

In this essay, his opinion seems less absolute than the other one. I could summarize as, "Accept consulting as a means to an end, not an end in itself." Indeed, that is the advice I heeded so perhaps he's right after all!