I'm interested in going independent and starting a small software contracting / consultancy doing business applications and application modernisation work. I've got former colleagues who want to work with me, and we've got over a decade of experience each on the good, bad and ugly of this type of work.<p>I'm confident we could execute on the technical work, but the commercial side worries me. My current employer deals in smaller deals and in the past year I've seen<p>* Non payment
* Bullying by customers to try and get free labour
* Companies deliberately under bidding at costs they know they can't achieve
* Customers using ambiguity in statement of work to extract extra work (for example the word "secure" causing a lot of private endpoints, HSM keys and Microsoft Defender needing to be configured for a recent Proof of Concept piece of work)<p>I've also seen some good clients and companies I'd like to continue working with. I'm concerned that the bad customers take up 90% of the time.<p>From people's experience, how tough is the commercial side of this sort of business? Do you need a hardened commercial guy to succeed?