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- Feb 5, 2011
- 34
- 20
Hi all,
just wanted to share part of my story.
I started my first business straight after college, me and a bunch of friends decided to launch a company building e-commerce sites(this was back in the day when it was a relatively new thing).
To begin with there were six of us. Two were designated to do the sales, four to build the websites.
The problem was that these people were selected because they were my friends, not for any other reason. They had no real skills, sure they could use a computer, but no sales experience or web design experience.
I had both and took it on myself to train them up, never has the saying you can "lead a horse to water", ever been so apt. The sales people were next to useless, in four weeks they managed to set up just two meetings and sold nothing.
I went out on my own and landed a contract worth $50k in a week.
As soon the the sales people realised they would actually have to do some work to get money, they decided it was not the thing for them and quit.
So there were four of us left. We fulfilled the $50k contract and began looking for more, but by this time competition was fierce, and we had no luck. Faced with the prospect of doing long hours and without a regular income, two more quit.
So all that were left were me and my best buddy. He was a talented coder, but he lacked the spark and the necessary character of what it takes to make a start up work.
Furthermore he couldn't sell ice to Eskimos. At one point I had a sale worth $80k almost sealed up, all he had to do was go there and present the product and sign the contract, somehow he managed to loose the sale.
He became more like an employee. The best way to describe it would be that to me work to me was a joy, not a chore. I would work every day, even when I was ill, and all hours. He however, would take days off when he was ill, and when he got tired.
Things go worse as his attitude went from being an employee to a disgruntled employee. He wanted to pay himself a salary (he was living with his parents, so had no real outgoings), whereas I wanted to re-invest the most into building the company.
In the end we parted company, we split the cash 50/50. He took all the code he had developed, and I was fine with that because the quality of his code was low.
The final nail in the coffin of our friendship was when I found out that he had stolen code that I had developed and launched his own websites using it. At first I was blisteringly mad, but after I calmed down I realised there was nothing I could do. However, he was his own worse enemy, and soon shut down the websites when he realised the work required to make them succeed, he's now got himself a full-time job working for someone else, doing coding and no thinking.
The irony is, that a year after it, he called me up. There was another business venture that he had become involved with and wanted me to be part of it. I met with him and his new business partner, they were offering me a 2.5% stake in the venture. They would both have over 30% each.
I told him that hell would freeze over before I would consider working with him again, and that was it. The venture failed, and his business partner disappeared with all the code that was eventually developed.
So my lessons from this :
1.work with people who are of a similar attitude as me, who want to building something and not work for someone else. There will be plenty of time to hire employees later, but during the early days of a venture I look for someone with that same spark.
2. Why bother training to make a square peg fit a round hole. If I want a sales person Ill hire a sales person, if I want a manager, Ill hire a manager. Im not into training people to do the job I hire them for.
It was a costly lesson to learn, I am still friends with some of the first to quit, but I'll never mix business and friendship again.
just wanted to share part of my story.
I started my first business straight after college, me and a bunch of friends decided to launch a company building e-commerce sites(this was back in the day when it was a relatively new thing).
To begin with there were six of us. Two were designated to do the sales, four to build the websites.
The problem was that these people were selected because they were my friends, not for any other reason. They had no real skills, sure they could use a computer, but no sales experience or web design experience.
I had both and took it on myself to train them up, never has the saying you can "lead a horse to water", ever been so apt. The sales people were next to useless, in four weeks they managed to set up just two meetings and sold nothing.
I went out on my own and landed a contract worth $50k in a week.
As soon the the sales people realised they would actually have to do some work to get money, they decided it was not the thing for them and quit.
So there were four of us left. We fulfilled the $50k contract and began looking for more, but by this time competition was fierce, and we had no luck. Faced with the prospect of doing long hours and without a regular income, two more quit.
So all that were left were me and my best buddy. He was a talented coder, but he lacked the spark and the necessary character of what it takes to make a start up work.
Furthermore he couldn't sell ice to Eskimos. At one point I had a sale worth $80k almost sealed up, all he had to do was go there and present the product and sign the contract, somehow he managed to loose the sale.
He became more like an employee. The best way to describe it would be that to me work to me was a joy, not a chore. I would work every day, even when I was ill, and all hours. He however, would take days off when he was ill, and when he got tired.
Things go worse as his attitude went from being an employee to a disgruntled employee. He wanted to pay himself a salary (he was living with his parents, so had no real outgoings), whereas I wanted to re-invest the most into building the company.
In the end we parted company, we split the cash 50/50. He took all the code he had developed, and I was fine with that because the quality of his code was low.
The final nail in the coffin of our friendship was when I found out that he had stolen code that I had developed and launched his own websites using it. At first I was blisteringly mad, but after I calmed down I realised there was nothing I could do. However, he was his own worse enemy, and soon shut down the websites when he realised the work required to make them succeed, he's now got himself a full-time job working for someone else, doing coding and no thinking.
The irony is, that a year after it, he called me up. There was another business venture that he had become involved with and wanted me to be part of it. I met with him and his new business partner, they were offering me a 2.5% stake in the venture. They would both have over 30% each.
I told him that hell would freeze over before I would consider working with him again, and that was it. The venture failed, and his business partner disappeared with all the code that was eventually developed.
So my lessons from this :
1.work with people who are of a similar attitude as me, who want to building something and not work for someone else. There will be plenty of time to hire employees later, but during the early days of a venture I look for someone with that same spark.
2. Why bother training to make a square peg fit a round hole. If I want a sales person Ill hire a sales person, if I want a manager, Ill hire a manager. Im not into training people to do the job I hire them for.
It was a costly lesson to learn, I am still friends with some of the first to quit, but I'll never mix business and friendship again.
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