Agreed. While there's a concern that non-product development activities are a distraction from product development and marketing efforts, I can tell you from experience that raising money and managing investors is a MAJOR time drag. It can consume 3+ months of your life in doing nothing but chasing meetings, crafting presentations, and satisfying the puzzling whims of different investors.

Then you have to work with lawyers to draft and finalize terms. And once you are done, you aren't done. The monthly/ quarterly investor presentation dance and the associated mental stress is just as defocusing as putting together a workshop or writing an eBook.

On the whole, I actually think having a complementary side-business to your main business, especially something that has some scale to it like workshops and/or e-books makes a LOT of sense. Especially when you combine it with the fact that software startups nowadays require less capital than ever to start.