[epapop id=’3958′]
Can I start a business with friends? This eternal question every entrepreneur has to look for the right answer. Although not too much to ask the opinion of those who decided to combine friendship and business and, despite all the fears, he began his work with his comrades. We provide entrepreneurs arguments “for” and “against.”
FOR
Yuri Lifshitz, co-founder of coworking center “Coverage”: “If you have been familiar with and do projects in the past (eg, the school organized trips), then you know exactly how you will solve the conflict. You have a high level of trust, avoiding micromanagement. Investors clearly prefer teams that have long been working together and have common values. The reason for the failure of startups β1 – a conflict cofounders. The long and positive history of relationships may reduce this risk. Example: co-founders of “Yandex” Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich β classmates at the Republican Physics and Mathematics School of Almaty.”
AGAINST
Gabriel Levy, CEO of “Dnevnik.ru:
“Unfortunately, in any” friendly “business, there comes a time when each of the partners have to make a difficult choice between the interests of business and friendly relations. The situation may be different, but the result is usually the same β yesterday’s comrades swear three sheets and, at best, stop communicating, and at worst β have become bitter enemies. In a difficult situation only a few put friendships and relationships over money, power and personal ambitions.”
FOR
Richard Reid, the founder of Innocent Drinks: “I have many warned that business with friends β a very bad idea. But we have proved that it is not. We were close friends before, but now have become even closer. The last 14 years we are working in the same office. We have three common values. We want to succeed, but do not want to sell it for the soul. And always aware that the work β is one thing, and friendship β is another. At work, we do not discuss personal things outside of work, we do not discuss work. We are very lazy. If someone had a big ego, then we may be, and would be disbanded. When a company has become a large, we were forbidden to fly on the same flight. If the plane falls, there will be nobody to lead the company. Of course, we understand that the idea of intelligent. But still we fly-way, because none of us are not interested to stay in business on its own.”
AGAINST
Vyacheslav Semenchuk, CEO My-Apps.com: “If you have friends, then you understand the strong and weak sides of each other? In practice it is not so. Friends, an active and hard-working, business turned in front of the lazy workers in what you have never seen them. Do you trust each other and believe that one you do not throw? In fact, because of the high trust of friends can deceive you for so long that it can not be compared with the usual trick employee. Friends do not have to pay? Once you start working, they focus on all of your money. From my partner and friend, with whom we shared is always 50 to 50, I once heard that he wants 80% of the business (which has already become large) and I the remaining 20%. Then he immediately ceased to be a partner. Friends always help you out in life, is brought to the house drunk and borrow money? In business, this will not wait. Those friends will score a job and tear as possible. And you have to do everything yourself. And to leave with a friend who does not work, we need determination. Because after that in 95% of cases, it ceases to be your friend.”
FOR
Max Litmus, the creator of the resource Planeta.ru:
“I am convinced that to start a business with friends is possible and even necessary. If this is the case in your life, and you invest in it with all my heart, that friends can become a reliable support. This is especially important if you do that no one before you did, and you have a lot of work on the destruction of stereotypes and skeptical statements about the activities of your company. In cases where the coming great moral and material investments, friendship helps keep your internal resources and direct all energy on achieving results. This feeling of fellowship in general an interesting fact, that people are engaged with dedication and faith in a successful enterprise. If the business involves sawing chego-to very valuable and accidentally turned up, or is it a workstation on a large competitive market that has the “special rules”, such as businesses in our country a lot, then it is likely that there may be fast friends stop being friends and generally crap one another injury at the stage of signing the contract.”
By author Maria Gorbacheva