Anyone who wanted to quit their jobs and start off on their own would definitely have this question, well most of them anyways. Let’s look at some pointers as to which is a better option.
If you opt for freelancing – You have to be an expert at what you do and that’s the bottom-line. You are your own boss that’s a given, and its more of a solo / single man show. And the money is limited and so is the work as you are just a single person running your own show – with a home office. Your target clientele would be startups or companies willing to work with freelancers and independent consultants. Believe it or not there are both big (sometimes) and small businesses who seek freelancers.
PROS:
1) You aren’t dependent on anyone and the responsibility completely lies on you.
2) The money is decent once you start getting clients.
3) You can work on your own terms.
4) There is no investment required.
CONS:
1) Your work is limited and you can’t take up more work and hence not make more money.
2) Scope of learning is limited as you are limited to your own expertise.
3) Most of your time is spent either on getting leads or on executing work. Balancing them both becomes difficult.
4) As a freelancer getting the payments realized becomes bit of a challenge – and most of the time you end up working “cheap”.
If you opt for starting your own company – You should have an excellent and responsible core team and that’s the bottom-line here. If you don’t have team sharing responsibilities and work delegated – then don’t bother setting up a business as its no more a single man show. Money will be good not initially though and being persistent is the key here.
PROS:
1) You have a team to deliver work and responsibility is shared.
2) More scope to take up additional work.
3) Good learning cycle and scope of growth.
4) You can concentrate on your core competencies and leave the other aspects operational, delivery, etc for others to handle.
CONS:
1) There are dependencies and any loose ends on team performances means business is affected.
2) If not lot, but quite a bit of investment is required .
3) Higher risk as your investment is also at stake.
4) You might end up taking care of other activities like managing operations / getting clients rather than your core competency – balancing is very important here.
From personal experience, my opinion is first get onto freelancing for sometime and later-on once you get the right and like minded people go ahead and start your business.