One Common Business Startup Trap to Avoid

If a new business startup is a dream that you plan to make a reality in the near future, be careful to not find yourself in a trap that is common to many who have taken the journey you are embarking upon. It happened to me.

Not too many years ago I had an idea for a web based service that would solve a problem in an industry where I was highly familiar. Nobody had considered the idea of innovating something that was grounded in tradition for many years. I noticed an opening where a need could be filled so I put plans together.

The first thing I did was form an LLC. I wanted my business to be registered since I was going to be working with a variety of people in order to get this done.

As a young person not long out of college, I wasn’t swimming in money so I decided that I wanted to figure out how to save money on the development instead of finding people who would surely charge a lot of money to develop it.

I had a friend who was a retired web developed from a major firm so I thought this was the perfect choice. We decided to split any potential revenue from the project. I was going to do the advertising and work with my contacts in the industry to push the product. He was going to do all of the programming. We had numerous meetings and were both excited.

I had a major client lined up soon after the wheels of this business startup began to turn but things started to fracture. Being retired, and a friend, he quickly made this a spare time project rather than a business venture. Deadlines were missed, the product wasn’t well thought out and it was taking shape as something that was underwhelming to say the least. Because we were friends, and business partners, it was hard to offer direction to him. He had a way that he wanted to do it.

We had originally set a 6 month development deadline but the project ended up taking 18 months and it didn’t turn out as something that I was proud of. In the end, another competitor emerged and even I liked their product better than ours. I later hired somebody to try to clean up the product but it was too late. Our competitor’s product was later adopted and a lot of time and money was wasted.

What’s the pitfall? While it is always a good idea to be prudent with how you spend your funds, you must invest money to make your business startup take off. When you don’t pay for quality, you don’t get quality.

As you continue developing your startup, spend the money to get good people involved. You’ll be much more successful in the end.