Confirm your desire to start a business

Most people have a misunderstanding of starting a business. When it comes to starting a business, they think of working overtime in a rented house without pay until they die and become famous overnight. In fact, it is common to start a business now. You don’t have to burn your boats and taste hardships, and not everyone involved in starting a business has to become a founder and CEO. Depending on your goals, you can choose a niche in the startup ecosystem.

  • I have one idea that NEEDS to be done anyway

  • I met someone who thought the same and we decided to do it together: the co-founder

  • I recognize someone’s idea very much, I have very good ability, I want to help him: partner

  • I think there is a lot of money in starting a business, and I want to take a gamble: the key employees of the invested company, the kind with options

  • I thought starting a business was fun, and I wanted to experience this: if you’re an early employee of an funded company, if you don’t need money, it doesn’t matter if you don’t

  • Programmer startup CEO?

If you haven’t made money on your own, a free APP with tens of thousands of users, a large website with over 50,000 followers, and a website with 100,000 PVVS per day, then don’t leave your job and try it out in your spare time.

Many things are not only a matter of ability, but also a matter of taste. I met a lot of great programmer ceos who weren’t happy. If you don’t like serving a bunch of guys (i.e. your users), stay at a big company and be a quiet keyboard hunk.

Distinguish between cofounders and cofounders

Few people can tell the difference between a partner and a co-founder, and the terms are casual in the industry. For clarity, I’ve defined partners and cofounders as follows:

  • A co-founder has a say in the direction of the business and should have a vote on the board. He can influence and even modify decisions, not just about what technology architecture the product should use, how the company should grow, or whether to accept a particular investment round.

  • Co-founders and founders are equal and have an obligation to do whatever it takes to ensure the success of the company.

  • The need for a co-founder to start a business is internal, and if the founder quit, he’ll keep going, and he’ll even start a new company to make it happen.

Partners are different.

  • The partner is the existence of the auxiliary founder, the general direction is set by the founder. He does not make decisions, only offers advice and opinions, and helps to complete one aspect of the business. Accordingly, partners should not assume the obligations of a co-founder.

  • Partners can be added at a later stage, not necessarily at an earlier stage. Correspondingly, partners who join in the middle and later stages will have fewer shares.

  • A partner’s entrepreneurial needs are influenced by the founder, who does not want to completely lead a company (out of his own perception and liking of his own abilities), and if the founder quits, he is more likely to be a partner with another team.

The reason for this distinction is that there are many teams that trick programmers into joining, giving you the rights of a partner (who thinks a tech knows what the business is) but asking you to do your co-founder’s job (write code for free).

In fact, most of the time, technical people are involved in startups as partners or core employees, so I’ll focus on those two.

Be a tech partner or a key employee

If you just want a share, early key employees can get a few percentage points. That’s enough money to cover your expenses once the company goes bankrupt.

As a tech partner in a startup (especially early on), you have to deal with people as much as machines. In short, all technical problems are your problems, and all technical problems are your problems. Don’t think of a startup focused only on technology, computer room is to be managed, team is to take, external speech is to do, cooperation interface is to talk about.

Define what you want, and then choose where it fits.

Three tips for anyone who wants to be a tech partner

1. Don’t go if you can’t invest in a team

The first thing to consider in starting a business is risk. In an industry with a success rate of less than 1%, don’t trust the odds. There are people who become famous overnight, but most of the attempts fail in the middle.

If your skills are good, you have A good chance of making it in the seed round or even the A round. Don’t take an early risk if there’s no good reason (like your skills suck).

Going to an funded firm, making the same salary as before, and doing what you dream of, is a typical low-risk career path for a partner.

Don’t believe the media. There is no causal relationship between bitter and bitter feelings and entrepreneurial success. They are just zhu jun’s tears, which are used to stir up emotions.

2. Don’t go to a team that hasn’t had an MVP in years

If you see a guy who’s been talking about starting a business for over a year and can’t even produce an MVP (minimum available product), take note. The truth is very simple, an MVP to outsource, do down also 10,000 ~ 20,000. If the founder really believed in his idea as deeply as he said he did, he wouldn’t have waited for free labor to do it.

You see:

  • The minimum valuation of our project is 10 million;

  • We can get funding soon after the MVP comes out;

  • I’ll give you 20%.

If all the above is true, I am willing to pay 2 million yuan to a stranger even though the outsourcing costs only 10,000 ~ 20,000 yuan. The founder of this IQ can’t talk to? If the founder’s IQ is ok, at least one of the things he tells you is off the mark.

3. Don’t join a team where the tech partner doesn’t pay

Remember the story of a pig and a chicken selling an egg and ham sandwich?

All things being equal, founders usually have only one idea that they don’t know is right, while tech partners pay off with the meat of their legs. So tech partners deserve to be compensated, even when there is no investment.

If I were the founder, I would probably give my tech partner a choice if I didn’t invest and I thought the project was solid:

  • Tech partners get $5K a month, no shares.

  • After project financing, the technical partner can buy 10% of the company at 60K

  • Tech partners earn $2.5k a month, no shares.

  • After the project is financed, the technical partner can buy 20% shares of the company at 60K.

It’s not about the money, it’s about the rules

  • Everybody has to jump in;

  • Everyone has confidence in the project and recognition of each other.

In a word,

Founders should value shares more than money,

Put your partners before your shares.

One more word,

I want to be

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Reprinted fromGET xinzhi community: -d