What to do when your friend wants to be co-founder for your business idea
Have you ever come across those awkward situations where your friend wants to be your business partner or join your startup in some role. When you are at your friends meet, or at a party with your friend and suddenly you find your friend come to you and tell, “Hey your idea looks pretty awesome and I would really love to join you, can you accommodate me in your business.”
That was an awkward situation and every entrepreneur will face such a situation at some point in time. It all about how you face that situation. You can simply say, sorry but we are actually not looking for anyone right now and I’ll tell you when we are out looking for someone. Or you can also face with a note, yeah sure just send me your resume I ‘ll try to see if we can find a suitable position for your role.
But the situation is not always the same. If you are looking for a co-founder and you really find your friend a suitable person for the role go work with him. But when it comes to rejecting the partnership you need courage. You friend is constantly following up with you and he is aware that you are on look for someone for your company but you won’t feel your friend is a good fit, its always nice to explain the reason and reject the person. Because one bad decision will keep your startup at trouble.
Things to consider
1.Make a Proper decision
You have to not to be in a hurry to make a decision whether to accept or reject the friend for your startup. Just think about it. If you are actually looking for someone to join your company, why not consider your friend for that role. You can analyze what he can contribute to the organization and can check if he is a good fit for the position. They after analyzing you can take the calculated decision.
2.What can he Contribute
As an early startup or business, you always need a lot of things in the beginning, is it a garage for your work, or a workspace, or something else that you friend is in a comfortable position to provide you. They can use the resources of your friend and can make him part of the organization. In the end, you want to accumulate the resources for your startup so that you can kickstart your startup business.
3.Coroporate life vs Personal Life
Be in a startup or in a real-life, you will have different opinions from others. But when it comes to business this difference in opinion matters a most as it affects the companies future a lot. So once you are of decision that you want to make your friend your business partner, you have to keep in mind that you are not always to agree with your friend considering that disagreeing will damage your personal friendship. In corporate life, once you feel you didn’t like something, you have to tell it mentioning what are the problems with that and have to sit together and discuss. You have to be in a potion to differentiate between personal relationship and business relationship.
4.Make terms very clear written and agreed.
Most of the times when we are making friends our business partners and starting a business together, we blindly move forward with the move that we both will adjust in future. But when it comes to business when the hard times comes everyone wants to escape. hence you have to make it clear what is the share percentage of each one and what will be the position of each one and other terms related to the business which needs to be clearly documented and signed from both sides to prevent conflict in future. Oral promises and oral discussion will create a mess in the future when differences arise.
These are the few things that need to be kept in mind when you are planning to bring your friend onboard or you are planning a startup or business with your friends.
until next time…
