In fact, that's the kind of VAR his company uses. Such small VARs can pack a lot of muscle, too. Though Spivak of sba.net.web runs a one-man consulting shop, he can have as many as 50 partners and subcontractors out working with clients. Not surprisingly, the new VARs tend to be smaller than VARs in business longer, showing a median head count of 3.5 employees versus 10 for more established VARs. Ramping up to a fair size takes time, the one thing new VARs haven't had.
Profitability is another matter, though.
Part of the reason is that smaller shops have less overhead, but the mix of products and services tells an interesting story. New VARs generally start out to provide more profitable consulting and application development services, so they rely less on hardware than older VARs. That's why more profits go to the bottom line. So consulting services are half of our business. Adtell was founded eight months ago by four classmates at the University of Maryland and is just now lining up customers, mostly from word of mouth and a home page that lists startlingly low prices for Internet services.