Starting One's Own Business

I just took a look at my last post from back in July. I think the strengths inventory was, and is, largely accurate. That's interesting information, since a few days ago some friends from work approached me about starting our own company. I think a lot of those strengths line up perfectly with running a small-medium size business.

A big part of the economy in the Seattle area, and presumably in other cities with lots of tech companies, is what you might call these 3rd or 4th tier "consulting" firms. Primarily, what these companies do is staff augmentation. They supply workers of varying skill levels to work at these companies alongside their regular employees. At Microsoft, most of these workers are listed as vendors, some are listed as contingent staff. As I said, this secondary workforce works alongside Microsoft FTE's. In most cases, vendors do more specific tasks than FTE's, and that's kind of the main difference. Vendors spend a lot of time in their offices (or working from home) performing tasks that FTE's don't have either the time or willingness to do themselves. Some vendors, like me, are more senior level and do more planning-oriented type work, but that sort of thing is less common. There are also some vendor engagements where an entire set of services is essentially outsourced to the vendor company, where there is an entire team involved, and someone on the vendor team actually manages the day to day activities of the team. That sort of thing is less common at Microsoft. I want to say it happens more often at AT & T. I interviewed for one position there managing one of those teams for a vendor company, and I came close to getting that job. 

This is the type of business we're thinking about getting into. The obvious issue here is that the field is crowded. There are LOTS of companies trying to fill these slots. In Seattle, my guess is that there's something like fifty of these companies. That's the downside. On the upside, the barriers to entry are relatively minor and it's basically a sales and customer service business. It's also a relatively straightforward business. The name of the game is getting your foot in the door with different divisions and then making sure you manage relationships effectively.  

Tomorrow or the next day, I'll meet with these people and we'll talk this over. This isn't a slam dunk business, but it's very doable.