Build it and they will Consult.

Hack Yahoo
Originally uploaded by caterina.

Brad Feld has his as usual extremely astute assessment of startups that consult or custom build without regard for the bigger picture. (It's a great piece because he recognises the grey in between the black and white of building for the future vs building for a paycheck) : "The contracts enabled us to “be in business” for a while, but they had nothing to do with the business we set out to create. While the work enabled “survival”, our complete lack of focus (among many other things) contributed to our ultimate demise.. While survival was nice (and fun for a while), at some point you have to decide what you are going to focus on. If you don’t, as a Brazilian friend of mine once said – pounding his fist into his palm – “our lack of focus will fuck us” (say that three times fast with a Brazilian accent.)"

Eric Schmidt in a totally unrelated quote from their latest conference call/quarterly results : "The world is a very big place and Google has very much a worldwide mission. You're going to see more and more international focus, international expansion, international growth. Another is the investment in new products has continued apace. The primary investment, of course, according to our 70% rule, is in search and ads. When we talk about search -- we talk about search in everything -- and when we talk about ads, we talk about more than just the text ads. "