I partnered out of insecurity with someone who talked a good game and seemed strong in the areas I felt weak.
This insecurity cost me $$$
Choosing a business partner could be the 2nd most important relationship you ever choose (after who you marry.)
I just got out of a 5-year partnership that had become toxic.
Here's where I went wrong.
👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼
I partnered out of insecurity with someone who talked a good game and seemed strong in the areas I felt weak.
This insecurity cost me $$$
- What are my goals for this business?
- What are my strengths and weaknesses?
- What parts of starting/building this business am I the most unsure about?
- What might my perfect partner look like?
✅ Financially sensible & secure
✅ Shared vision & goals
✅ Emotionally intelligent (high eq > high iq)
✅ High integrity
✅ Similar work ethic
50/50 isn’t a business decision, it’s a settlement.
It’s a common way to decide equity splits because a down-the-middle split seems 'fair'. However, it's also lazy and more often than not is a bad deal for one person, and gets worse the longer it goes on
💰 Money
🎯 Skills
👥 Network
💡 Original idea
⏳ Experience
💪🏻 Sweat equity
Vesting is a term I wasn’t even aware of in 2015, but it’s essentially a way to accrue your equity over time instead of all at once. Common in the startup world, but not in the bootstrapped world.
My mistake: We both got our full 50% equity up front 🤦🏻♀️
Had we vested, he may only have been able to walk out with 20-25% equity.
😩😩😩
You must have an operating agreement! The purpose of this is to govern the internal operations of the business in a way that suits you - the owners.
Do NOT use a template or try to save money by avoiding using a lawyer.
This is one way I screwed myself and it became an enormous (and expensive) problem later.
Reenactment of me fixing later:
In marriage, the general statistic is that 50% of marriages end in divorce.
Well, 100% of businesses are going to end at some point and should be planned for at the beginning. Think of the buy-sell agreement as the prenup for your business.
- How should the business be valued?
- How quickly am I going to get paid out?
- Who can I/can I not sell to?
- Does my spouse have to sell back to the business if I die?
- What happens in a divorce when assets are split?
Owners should have fiduciary responsibility to the company.
Financial stress is one of the biggest reasons for divorce, and it’s no different in a business partnership — you need an explicit policy and it should include reward points.
In my case, my choice almost broke me and the business by the end.
Official announcement here: https://t.co/CzbrXkUcex
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The Beatles wrote “Yesterday” in less than a minute.
Led Zeppelin wrote “Rock And Roll” in 30 minutes.
The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army”, 10 min during a soundcheck.
The Rolling Stones, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”, 40min.
Making a startup in 24 hours is perfectly fine.
I worked on my first startup for 2.5years. It was an events app. Sunk in cost and expectations were so high, that I had to close it, despite getting consistent revenue.
In comparison, I wrote @CryptoJobsList in 2 days. And it's way more meaningful than what I've been doing in my events startup for 2.5 years.
When I let go of my engineering ego and let go of expectations that I need to raise capital and hustle for 4+ years — I started lauching fast and interating fast without any expectations — then I started coming up with something truly meaningful and useful ✨
12 startups in 12 months by @levelsio
24 hour startup by @thepatwalls
— are great challenges that make you focus on the end product value, iterate fast and see what sticks and ruthlessly kill what does not work.
Led Zeppelin wrote “Rock And Roll” in 30 minutes.
The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army”, 10 min during a soundcheck.
The Rolling Stones, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”, 40min.
Making a startup in 24 hours is perfectly fine.
I really think this idea of starting a starup in 24 hours is bad idea. Gives people thinking that you can do something meaningful in short period of time. https://t.co/l3x2ov33Qn
— Myk Pono \U0001f60e (@myxys) November 10, 2018
I worked on my first startup for 2.5years. It was an events app. Sunk in cost and expectations were so high, that I had to close it, despite getting consistent revenue.
In comparison, I wrote @CryptoJobsList in 2 days. And it's way more meaningful than what I've been doing in my events startup for 2.5 years.
When I let go of my engineering ego and let go of expectations that I need to raise capital and hustle for 4+ years — I started lauching fast and interating fast without any expectations — then I started coming up with something truly meaningful and useful ✨
12 startups in 12 months by @levelsio
24 hour startup by @thepatwalls
— are great challenges that make you focus on the end product value, iterate fast and see what sticks and ruthlessly kill what does not work.
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