[ryanmarsh]

Buying their employees time at one rate and selling it at a higher one.

It’s that simple.

Most of the questions I see around “how do you start x” seem to be driven from a lack of confidence in ability to sell. That is a learnable skill and, for something as in-demand as custom software dev, it’s not that hard.

Having been in and around that industry for some time now I can tell you that if you can listen to the sales prospect and articulate their need back to them better than they can they’ll assume you can deliver it. Most custom dev shops fail at this simple task and therefore lose out on many easy sales.