Software Business in the Middle East

Reading the post about partnership and co-founders I felt it would really make sense to put some comments on it based on our own experience of running software company.

The author, Dharmesh Shah, claims that getting right co-founder is one of the most important things for a successful startup. His point is that many startup companies have troubles with sales, marketing, technical implementation and so on, but many of those issues might be solved by having the right co-founders from day one.

You Need a Partner

In original post Shah claims that you need a partner to “spread the work and make better decisions”. I think it’s yes and no. You might run your own software company alone, and there are a lot of really successful companies with one founder. Later, when your product becomes larger and you need more people on board, you might probably hire somebody else. That’s true, it is easier to share the work with your partner, but I don’t think it is critical in certain cases.

Another story is if you develop some specialized software. Like in our case, developing Drug Database we need somebody with medical background. If you do not have enough money to hire somebody, you would need a partner.

One of You Can Build the Product

Basically, it is about not outsourcing your core business, which is pretty obvious. You might want to outsource your accounting, or ask another company to design and develop your home page, or buy some components or software from another company – but it sounds really stupid to ask somebody to develop your product instead of you.

One of You Can Sell

It’s very true. In our startup, one of us can build the product, and another one has domain knowledge. What we badly miss is a sales guy. But anyway, marketing and sales is not something that only wizards can do and even geeks can learn how to do it.

Know Your Partner Before You Start a Company

Well, it sounds logically. But reality might show some differences. I started my company with a few other guys whom I had known for pretty long time working in the same team for years. After 6 months, when we figured out that our product had a potential, but it would take us more time to be ready than we thought, they decided to quit. And my new partner, whom I had been known just for a few weeks ended up to be the dream partner – he puts a lot of efforts to move our company forward and he takes the same risks as myself paying for a lot of stuff from his own pocket.

Another thing that is still not clear for me is business with friends and relatives. In case of disagreement you might end up having failed company and failed friendship. My current partner had very bad experience when his brother-in-law managed my partner’s restaurant in US. Finally, money is gone, restaurant is closed, and my partner is not sure he wants to break up with his relative claiming his money back.

You Better Like Your Partner

It is also obvious. During the past year I think I’ve been talking to my partner more than to my wife. And I doubt you can spend so much time with somebody you don’t like. And without such patient wife too

Answer All the Tough Questions

This is an advice to agree on the most important things between partners, like how much time each of your will spend working on your startup, what happens if one of you will quit and so on. You can find more on this in the article Questions You Should Ask Your Co-Founders. I guess this is the main reason why my cooperation with my ex-partners failed – we didn’t discuss all the details of our partnership, thinking only about company ownership, shares and other money related stuff.

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