4 Type of Business Partner You Should Be Careful About

In my course of “Entrepreneurship through the lens of Venture Capital” by Stanford University, I was listening to  by Mr. Howard Hartenbaum, Partner, August Capital on “Funding Your Startup” and on one of the question on whom do they fund or not fund, he answered that he try not to fund a business run by couple(man-wife, live-in partners etc.). Reason he gave for doing so was the uncertainty in personal relationship may adversely affect the business relationship. I automatically connected to this assumption when I heard the Preity Zinta-Ness Wadia conflict story and Preity Zinta had to come out saying that she will not sell her stake in their joint business venture “Kings XI Punjab” IPL team.  During last six years when I started harboring the dream of quitting my job and becoming an entrepreneur and last four year, since actually quit the job and became one, I have met various people, I have seen various people becoming business partners and ending up sooner than later with soured personal relationship and it makes me think that how difficult it would be for a VC firm to fund a business? Not only getting funded a big challenge, but funding is also a big challenge. On the basis of my experience, I am going to list down the type of people, who should be considered with caution as a business partner. Since I am not having the one word name for them, I may write a sentence to give their introduction.

1)      The God- The Creator: These kinds of people are frustrated product engineers, who thinks that world around them is in the gutter because of its pathetic quality and they are born to change it. They will come out with innumerable ideas about how they can make the product like never seen before and consumers will jump over it before entering into the market. Once I was told by a prospective business partner that he want to build a best and consumer friendly product, which prompted me ask him about his definition of ‘best’ and whether he has talked to prospective users about his concept, even in veiled manner or not. And as he was pompous in explaining his idea to me, he replied in the similar manner that users don’t know what is good for them and they need to be educated. Though we entered into business relationship, because I was also naïve, we ended up being in two different corner of the country, not willing to talk to each other. Since I was also employed then and I was working on the principles of ‘Rocket Singh(From Hindi movie Rocket Singh: Salesman of the year), the loss did not trouble me the way it could have, had I been working full time on my business.  

2)      Me Too Entrepreneur: Every likes to read the story of Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs, but without the pain they had to go through, the passion and commitment they gave to their venture. For these types of people, entrepreneurship means no boss, no 9 to 7 job, free will etc., which definitely it is not. If you are an entrepreneur, then your customer is your boss and he is harsher than what your office boss could ever be. If you are an entrepreneur, then you are definitely free from 9 to 7 job, but now you are working 24 X 7. But these people get associated with you, then drag you back by their action, attitude, though their aptitude may be good.

3)      The Marketing Consultant type entrepreneur: In one of my business venture, I had a business partner, who was exactly like marketing consultant; coming out big ideas and even bigger never heard jargons. Now, you will say that I am stupid to work again and again with so called experts and then writing a story on them. What to do; I didn’t had the required money in my pocket and this fellow was born rich. We started the business and did some good business in initial 4-5 month, but whatever business we did was of scrap or export surplus items. During this period, I tried to roll out the business which we had actually planned, but every discussion of ours ended in frustration for me, because I was getting not more than great ideas on apple chips to some innovative technology products to homemade cakes and chocolates. Our business relationship ended by the completion of first year and so does our business.

4)      The Jobber: In stock market terminology, ‘jobber’ is a person, who buys and sells stock several times a day at small margin which covers the charges and some profit over and above that. One of my friends started a takeaway food joint in Mumbai. Since we are friends, so it was obvious for me to share my experiences with him. He along with his two partners pooled in money and started this business, but in third month itself, one of the partners started for asking his money back, because it was growing as he had expected. He mounted such a pressure on the business and other two partners that by fifth month, they had their business closed at a staggering loss and yes, my friend had to bear the maximum loss, because this was his business idea. These types of people think that getting into business is like plucking cash from brinjal plant.

 There is few more type of entrepreneur about whom I will come back later. Don’t forget to give your feedback.