From Consulting to Employee #1 at a YC Startup

What great approaches?

There's a difference between working at a startup with 3 people and working with a team of, say, 5-12 developers, who have a running product with paying customers and processes in place. "Ship often, iterate fast" has to be tempered with "you have existing users using system X - don't mess with it just because you want to experiment with something".

Thanks joedev, perhaps I will one day. As mgkimsal mentioned, consultants have to take into account other such considerations when working with more established teams. That said, consultancies like Pivotal Labs make it part of the engagement to impart best practices and effective process to their clients as much as possible.

2 words: fixed-budget.

Client come to consulting shops with known (albeit vague or generic) problem. Consulting shop will run down the number and give it to the client.

At that time, it's a matter of prioritizing which one that matters.

If client is willing to pay to consulting shops to run the software the way a typical Silicon Valley Web 2.0 companies work (iterate fast, break fast, ship fast, invest in automation test and measurement tools), I don't see why not.

At the end of the day it's all about the $$$. Who wants to get more out of the deal.