Lot’s of independent design and web companies consider product development as a way to branch out from their consulting-centric business. I’m all for it, and I think many companies are in an excellent position to succeed.
Building a business from the inside can invigorate a company’s culture, diversify income, and focus an entire staff’s talents into a beautifully executed product that only they could have built. It can also wreck a company’s finances, morale, and focus.
Building and self-funding a new company has a long term financial impact on the parent company, it requires team culture and domain expertise unique to the market at hand, extreme amounts of discipline, and ultimately you’ll be deciding what to do with this thing once you’ve learned whether it meets a real need.
Success isn’t always easy to see, and 99.9% of the time it’s not something you wake up to one morning (unless you just built ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com). Rather, it’s a slow, deliberate process that requires an entire company’s patience and understanding.
Over the next several weeks, I’ll be sharing thoughts on the topic based on our experiences building the Kin and DoneDone companies from within We Are Mammoth. Know that this has been our way and it’s not necessarily the highway.