This week in NYC, I met up with a person I had gotten to know over the last few months. Originally when we met, I thought that he had some really great ideas for products and services and proposed to him that we should work together on something. The initial proposal was to start small; we would start an LLC and begin working together on one of his projects.
Working together with someone on a startup is a bit like marriage. I learned this with a startup I began with another person. I had known this person for a while and considered him a friend. You think you know someone until you start working with them and spending time on a startup with minimal people; then you REALLY get to know them because when there is only two of you, every success or failure is amplified exponentially. There is nowhere to hide in a company with only 2 people in it. In this case, I had to close down the company after going through this learning process and finding out that we could not function together as partners in an entrepreneurial venture.
Suffice to say that money and commitment changes people, and finding people you can really work together and solve problems with is a real job.
Having learned the hard way that partnerships require a deeper learning about each other, I gingerly approached this other person about working together, leading with my enthusiasm for building something really cool and tempering that with a still-needing-to-know-each-other-better mentality. I thought that starting small would be really great way to enhance the get-to-know process, while minimizing the impact on each of us in case we needed to part ways.
So we began meeting more and working for a few weeks on one of his projects. In parallel with us getting more comfortable with each others’ working styles and abilities, he was driving forward a larger vision with another startup proposal. As that developed, we did become more comfortable with each other decided to roll the smaller project into the bigger one instead of taking an interim step of forming the smaller LLC.

I am very excited about the larger vision. It still can take one of two directions and each one has its own interesting elements. I am loath to discuss it at this early juncture, but within the year we’ll be able to talk about it in some capacity.
The involved team members are all colleagues and friends of this person and we all bring different strengths to the table, ranging from product to engineering to vision to business development. But on top of that, I find that I genuinely like these guys. I got to spend some time with them this week and am glad to see that we can have fun together as well as working together. Over the years of hanging out with Yahoo! sales folks, I have come to really know the benefits and importance of the interpersonal aspects of business. That doesn’t mean that successful companies couldn’t form without the interpersonal aspect. I am now a firm believer that it can definitely multiply chances for success if we all like to hang out and party together as much as we’re dedicated to the company’s operations and projects.
Meetings in NYC this week are for planning and moving forward on a product basis and also on a company formation and funding basis. We needed some minor seed capital to get to our first milestone, and amazing to me, I have managed to become lead investor for this early round at the small amount I was able to put in! How interesting to be in a position to affect the terms! So I gave my preferences and now we’re researching if those preferences can be met.
Still much work to do, getting to product beta launches and getting company operations started. But this is where I like to work best; being with one or more entrepreneurs and advising them, getting the company and product off the ground to a point where it can grow and flourish, and before any kind of money has even shown up.