Business Partnership Advice

[Dien Rice]

Originally Posted by marceloc

We are 3-partners company already started a year ago. We all have full time job and are working in part time to build our business idea. It is a web project and we outsource the design and development work to India. The project idea is great, but since we are working in part time, the progress is pretty slow, not only the development side, but also the marketing, the decision making, the business planning, etc. Recently, we also find that the budget is almost close to our limit. I know there are some missing pieces which needs to be completed before launch, but we have some argument about our working capital. With that in mind,

1. Should we launch our project no matter what?
2. Should we give up our idea since we don't have time to work on?
3. What other alternatives do we have?

Your advice is much appreciate. Thank you.

Hi Marcelo,

Thank you for sharing some information about your situation.

I bet this is a not-too-uncommon problem!

That is, it may go with the saying, "too many cooks spoil the broth!"

It sounds to me like you have more than one problem. The first problem is the slow progress, and the second problem is the budget.

Regarding your working capital first, if you decide you want to go ahead and that you need more capital, there are multiple avenues to explore...

• You could all put in an equal amount of extra money
• One or more of you could give a "loan" to the company from your personal assets
• One or more of you could buy more shares of the company (so that person or persons would own a bigger share of the company by doing so)
• You could get a bank loan
• You could get one or more external investors (who would then also own shares in your company)

Also, there is the issue of whether you should go ahead and launch, or not, if doing so will require extra money.

There are so many variables that we (who are reading your post) don't know about, that it is hard to say what is best to do.

I think the first thing I would look at is analyze how risky is this venture? Is there a high likelihood it will fail, or a high likelihood it will succeed, or somewhere in the middle?

You don't want to throw more money into a black hole that will just swallow it up. However, whether that is the case or not is impossible to tell from the information so far...

I'm not sure if I helped or not. Be sure to clarify what your goals are, then look at all your options to see which one will be more likely to help you achieve your goals.

It may turn out that you feel the best option to achieve your goals is to put in more money, or it may be that you feel the best option to achieve your goals is to "give up". It is impossible to say without more information.

Best wishes,

Dien