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not all business is worth it

It is increasingly clear to me that a business is the only best path forward.

All other forms of generating income involve tying yourself to someone and reliquinishing a great deal of freedom and power.

The classics:

Employee

Money path:

  1. Join a company.

  2. Generate value beyond the job you got hired to do.

  3. Hope you get compensated fairly and not screwed.

Upsides:

  1. stable salary regardless of value generated. "Just doing my job"

Downsides:

  1. general lack of freedom

  2. can be a deadend in terms of generating more income (compartmentalized organizations, bureaucracies, poor network opportunities etc.)

  3. compensation for generated value comes much later and is out of your control

    • dealing with legacy code and junk created by others. Almost always.

Consulting

Money path:

  1. get clients

  2. get work done

  3. bill them

Upsides:

  1. 100% freedom and flexibility in picking clients, working for more than one, not working at all. You choose.

  2. potential for passive income through retainers, pay per performance, padding managed costs (e.g infrastructure) and partnerships

Downsides:

  1. client work can be pointless

  2. generally an exchange of your time for money with limited growth opportunities except for unicorn clients

    • unicorn clients don’t always work in domain you have any interest in

    • dealing with legacy code and junk created by others. Almost always.

Business

Money path:

  • unclear until it is

Upsides:

  • eat your own dog food

  • work on domain and problems you are interested in

  • all benefits from consulting and employee when done right with little downside

  • more people breathing down your neck but much less power over your life

Downside:

  • 80/20 rule. 20% is good enough for you, 80% is about work you don’t care about but is needed to get users.

  • all aspects have to be handled. marketing, sales, advertising. There is no excuse for "This part of the job sucks, I’m not doing it". Do it or hire/delegate.

  • it never really ends until you sell or get acquired or hire someone to run it.