[WJW]

Starting an agency is the easiest part. Then after that comes the never ending grind to find and retain customers, who will never pay on time, refuse to budget time for frivolities like "testing" and "refactoring" and who will mercilessly shop out the work to as many of your competitors as they can find. Developer agencies have existed for decades and the reason that not everybody is rushing to work for them is because they are generally very poor place to work for compared to regular companies, even as a partner. They're often derogatorily called "body shops" for a reason.

[LAC-Tech]

As an independent contractor for the past two years, It hasn't been much of a grind finding and retaining customers. You have to put some work in, sure, but I don't feel it's particularly onerous. Never had to take someone out to dinner or cold call. People need software development skills and generally like it when you find them.

As for never being paid on time - I think the most late it's ever been has been 2 weeks. Pretty annoying but not the biggest deal in the world.

[lowercased]

> As an independent contractor for the past two years, It hasn't been much of a grind finding and retaining customers....I think the most late it's ever been has been 2 weeks.

When it's you who's gettind paid a bit late... it's manageable. When those late payments affect people you have to pay... it's a whole different game. I've been on both sides of this and it's great when it works, and bad when it doesn't. Building up a large buffer helps, but can take some time to get to an effective place that gets you more than a couple weeks of runway.

[LAC-Tech]

Right. I mean I literally want to be co-owners of a business with one other person. Not hire a bunch of subordinates. A literal business partnership.

[pjungwir]

I'm also an independent contractor trying to find one or two trustworthy partners to go to the next step. I haven't found sales, collections, etc. to be so onerous. In fact usually I'm turning away work.

A few years back I tried forming an LLC with a couple friends, but they both have full-time jobs and they keep getting promoted, so it's never gone anywhere, and we're talking about winding it down. I'd love to try again with someone who is already independent and is ready to try something bigger.

I haven't read Developer Hegemony, but another great book about the dynamics of such a partnership is Managing the Professional Service Firm by David Maister. It's pretty dense, but it's full of great ideas.

I went into freelancing in part to avoid becoming a manager, and I think with the right kind of partnership you could still practice your craft while still helping to lead a small team of people---or maybe even just mostly collaborating with other partners. The Maister book has helpful things to say here about whether your firm focuses on work that is repeatable & leveragable (e.g. making Wordpress sites) vs unique, challenging, and done mostly by partners (which sounds more fun to me).

I'm in Portland, Oregon, if anyone is interested in talking about something like that. :-)

[WJW]

Maybe I misunderstand what you hope to get out of the partnership then? The Dev Hegemony book describes a situation where everyone (every dev at least) magically becomes an "opportunist" in the books terms, without going into what will happen to all the pragmatists and idealists. Nor does it have an answer for why the opportunist/idealist/pragmatist divide will not reappear inside the agency.

[LAC-Tech]

The scale of what I can deliver is somewhat limited as a single person.

[btmcnellis]

There is a big difference between finding work for yourself and finding enough work to keep a whole team employed, as you would be doing if you ran an agency.