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My current advice for people going into Software Entrepreneurship is to create the simplest, easiest to build me-too company of all time - a Software Consultancy / Freelancing company. Nothing is as easy as having a product people want (programmer time) and just selling that directly. You'll learn a lot more about business than you would have learned by trying to start a failed product company, and you'll do it while getting actual money and real networking done.

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It can be very difficult to start building projects when you already do freelance work though. It can be very distracting plus it's probably going to be a while before what you could earn from a product gets anywhere near what you are earning as a freelancer.

That said I don't necessarily think your advice is bad, it just depends what you want.

I say this as a freelancer currently working on some products as well.

I hear people talk about this, and oDesk exists, but I never met someone who ever hired a general software freelancer. The closest is MSFT hiring a contractor, but that is just paperwork over flextime/short-term regular employment.

Maybe I just haven't been exposed to the self-selling side of this consulting.

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