If you are partnering up, you may want to take a look at doing work through a site such as grouptalent.com. I've only just started with it by partnering up with a development team outside of the country, but one of the nice things is that it helps eliminate the source of the most tedious and least enjoyable part of freelancing/consulting: getting clients.
Not only does it allow you to take on larger jobs, but I think the average rate per hour can be higher. Dealing with larger jobs means that you are dealing with larger clients that are more likely to be able to handle a higher hourly rate.
TBH, greatly reducing the overhead of the process of acquiring clients is what sells me on the idea. As a consultant/freelancer, you bill a high hourly rate to make up for a lot of this overhead. A solid market for projects means more profit.
We're literally talking to our first client now. If you want, look at my profile and shoot me an email in 2-4 weeks and I'll be able to give you more feedback.
I think the ability to take on larger projects is great because the projects are likely to be more interesting, without being overwhelming.
FWIW, I'm a product manager and front-end developer at my own startup and on GroupTalent I'm working as a product manager with a development and design team in Colombia.
I found out about GroupTalent from the development team. I had worked with them before as a client and liaison between our development team and theirs, so when I reached out to them we knew it was a good fit between us.
