[inthewoods]

I've got a full time job, and I've done startups - both are obviously valuable. A friend of mine approached me recently with the idea of doing a startup - but he didn't have any ideas. He wanted to do consulting in his chosen space to find that idea.

My problem with this is that, in my mind, it doubles the risk - you have go into consulting (which is not risk free), then hope you find an idea. There is then additional risk of starting the company and finding out if the idea is a scalable product - I've had it happen twice that we thought we had a product, but it turned out we had a product that required so much consulting to launch we were essentially a consulting company.

[JoeAltmaier]

Consulting isn't all that risky depending. I never made as much money as when I was part of a consulting partnership. But the work was less glamorous/interesting. Mostly solving legacy system problems (where by definition companies might have lost their expertise and have to call in an outsider).

At least a startup is always new and fresh, at least with a good product. That's why I gave up on consulting (that and the other partners had a falling-out) and have been in startups every since.

[inthewoods]

Did you find any ideas while consulting that you could use in spinning up a startup? I agree with you about consulting.

[JoeAltmaier]

Sure ideas are a dime a dozen. Getting a team, funding, traction are all more important.