By way of Twitter, I just came across this great little post about the perils of starting up a company with a friend.  The sage advice in the article could be written for any company having more than one owner.  As a former corporate law professor used to say, “Starting a business is like getting married: everybody only sees the roses.”  Yes, a bit cynical, but often sadly true.

The point — which is reflected in the advice in this post — is that all of the owners must discuss all of the possible problems ahead of time and decide how they will be handled.  Anyway, here’s the list of lessons the author put together, which he expands upon.

1. Make your agreements explicit so that you don’t break implicit promises
2. Detail your agreements so that your promises are clear
3. Don’t be afraid of discussing negative scenarios, so that you don’t add the stress of misunderstanding to already bad situations
4. Write things down so you’ll remember
5. Don’t make things work at all costs, so that you don’t spend the next years living with a deal that’s not acceptable to you
6. Don’t assume things will get better with time, so you’re not surprised when they don’t

The list isn’t exhaustive, as the author notes, but it is a good starting point for discussions before the company is started.

Tags: agreements, startup advice

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 11:33 am and is filed under Corporate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.