Ask HN: What was your experience starting a tech consultancy?
Here are a few things I would recommend:<p>- Never do a fixed bid.  Not even when the job looks small or you are desperate for work. Any time a fixed bid goes wrong, not only do you lose money and time, but it's unbelievably demoralizing.<p>- Hire people.  If you do it all by yourself, you'll end up doing all the jobs.  Fun for about 1 month and then exhausting.<p>- Be honest.  This is the one thing I feel like I got right.  When I didn't know how hard something was, I would just tell the prospect or customer that while simultaneously telling them how we were going to figure it out.  This approach always got me customers that I could work with and who were patient with me when I was consulting.<p>- Net 30 or better terms. Cashflow on Net 60 or Net 90 is brutal.