Entrepreneur lesson #8: Consulting to bootstrap slows you down immensely

Many entrepreneurs are looking to maintain as much ownership of the company as possible over time. To pay the bills and have some revenue come in, one strategy is to engage in consulting assignments. Of course, some founders are able to go without salary for an extended period of time, but in practice, they often are no longer students and have a mortgage and a family to support. And even if you’re used to living on a tight budget, the time and resources it takes to get a company off the ground requires you to bring in significant amounts of money anyway.

Spending time on consulting engagements is a perfectly viable strategy to stretch your runway until you need to bring in external funds. In practice, however, I’ve noticed a number of risks companies experience when complementing the product business with consulting engagements. There are at least three that I think are worth discussing here: speed, certainty and maintaining the illusion.