It's a plan that probably works for enterprise middleware, but for the majority of reality that is not covered by such a descriptor, it is significantly harder to find a path this way.
Unless you're an Oracle consultant on one end of the scale, or a WordPress theme designer on the other end, you're probably not going to be able to repeatably find lots of clients who want a little of your time and are willing to pay enough for you to work on the side.
A lot of clients want to hire consultants for full-time work, and they are frequently only looking for bodies to fill chairs. Finding a decent client that treats you with respect and understands they can't monopolize your time is hard, hard work.
So if your R&D effort is not related to your consulting--or your contract terms assign ownership of all work materials to the client--you'll just end up in the same situation as having a job.
I suspect the only reasonably repeatable path for early funding for big R&D efforts is through obtaining grants. Learn grant writing, or pay someone who does do grant writing (imagine the longest paper you wrote in college and quadruple it). There are a lot of research grants available, even for independent people not associated with accredited academic research environments. There are even grants for work in the arts.
I've spent the last two years doing freelance consulting. The money I've made was great, but I'm no closer now to starting a company than I was before. You should only do consulting if consulting is what you want to do.
I'm doing it right now, actually. It is possible; there are clients out there that will pay for problems to be solved or for deep expertise. Even in the cases where they want a warm body for 3 months to a year, if it brings in enough cash for your other two partners to keep working, then great!
Outside of America this is basically how you have to do it pre-traction.
I think freelancing equips you with other skills (knowledge of the Big Three financial statements, ability to work independently, relevant laws, how to value a company etc) that will prove beneficial when it comes time to start a company.
It's a plan that probably works for enterprise middleware, but for the majority of reality that is not covered by such a descriptor, it is significantly harder to find a path this way.
Unless you're an Oracle consultant on one end of the scale, or a WordPress theme designer on the other end, you're probably not going to be able to repeatably find lots of clients who want a little of your time and are willing to pay enough for you to work on the side.
A lot of clients want to hire consultants for full-time work, and they are frequently only looking for bodies to fill chairs. Finding a decent client that treats you with respect and understands they can't monopolize your time is hard, hard work.
So if your R&D effort is not related to your consulting--or your contract terms assign ownership of all work materials to the client--you'll just end up in the same situation as having a job.
I suspect the only reasonably repeatable path for early funding for big R&D efforts is through obtaining grants. Learn grant writing, or pay someone who does do grant writing (imagine the longest paper you wrote in college and quadruple it). There are a lot of research grants available, even for independent people not associated with accredited academic research environments. There are even grants for work in the arts.
I've spent the last two years doing freelance consulting. The money I've made was great, but I'm no closer now to starting a company than I was before. You should only do consulting if consulting is what you want to do.