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Comment by wslh | Hacker News Reader

I have a company that includes consulting offerings and while the article points resonate with me and know that real consulting is complex and a craft, the article is too general and more oriented to personal consulting that a business around that.

For example, in our case, several consulting work could be seen as presales for other services and/or products while other companies take it as business marketing and sale expenses. If you see consulting in this way, the picture changes dramatically and from the finances/accounting point of view you are converting expenses into income.

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Yea, but that type of consulting is typically billed as professional services(or similar), not advisory work.

If product companies are smart, they might put this role under costs to acquire customer vs services and then have it as a fee for onboarding. I can’t remember the details, but I’ve been told having really profitable services can really complicate VC/fundraising.

Sorry, I didn't understand what is the argument bhind your first paragraph: advisory vs. consulting.

Regarding your second paragraph, investors looking for the the YC startup definition don't like services companies because they couldn't scale at the pace of product companies but they are specific investors oriented to these companies because they have a more secured cashflow.

BTW, some people like Michael Cusumano [1] argued about hybrid companies to better handling economic cycles.

[1] https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/michael-a-cusuman...

It's hard to argue with the idea that a diverse set of revenue streams provides more revenue stability.

You could read his arguments reading and watching his papers and videos. This is not an endorsement but worked on my business.

Basically the argument is that there are business cycles when companies are spending more money on products and less on services and in some crisis with services you can compensate that. There is no general advice for all companies.

Yes, I am confident that if I read/heard his arguments, it'd be even harder for me to argue with the idea that a diverse set of revenue streams provides more revenue stability.

I understand your argument from the point of view of laser focus for startups but not from the point of view of conglomerates such as Samsung, Sony, Fujitsu, Amazon. In the middle there are zillions of organizations.

> Sorry, I didn't understand what is the argument bhind your first paragraph: advisory vs. consulting.

It was more to clarify it was proserv work than anything.

In the context of SaaS/tech, typically professional services is implementation, maintenance or break/fix of specific products or technology. Advisory work is supposed to be independent work where you are being paid for (what is supposed to be) unbiased opinions and strategy.

It's the difference between staff augmentation / project work and strategic / planning work.

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