About that whole Grabgas fiasco

https://www.techinasia.com/cto-quits-startup-takes-tech-team-screwed

First, this is why winning a competition or in the media highlight doesn’t necessarily means anything. It just means that you are good at presenting numbers and slides. Some people made up numbers and fairy tale to impress people and judges. If you want to know the real thing, you must look how the company is run, their daily operation. Do they create real value that people willing to pay? And talk to their real customer.

http://julianee.com/a-tale-of-lies-and-deceit-my-experience-on-how-grabgas-screwed-me-over/

Second, always look at the founders track record. Do they have work experience as employee? as leader? As a startup founder? If they don’t have any of this experience that means they just taken their baby steps. Be very-very wary, especially when there’s no mentor to guide them.

There are a lot of work related things that they don’t teach you at school. How to treat your employee, how to be open, how to be discreet at some issue. How interpersonal office relation works. How to value relationship over money. Opportunity come and go, but a broken relationship is hard to mend. And broken reputation stays with you forever.

Third, working with friends is the most natural thing to do. But a lot of time people forget, being in a business with a friend is very different with being a friend. You can get into agreement verbally and do everything fast. This verbal agreement is something we often call the Gentleman Agreement. So before you do this kind of agreement, make sure that the other party is a proper Gentleman/Gentlewoman.

And when it come to business every kind of agreement must be put on black and white. With friends you can postpone this step, but it still need to be done. If you manage to put the agreement in writing in the first week it would be great. But if you can’t, I recommend 2–3 month grace period. After that you need to explicitly push the agreement to be put on writing.

If the other party seems to be reluctant and evasive, you need to be worry. Because maybe you didn’t do an agreement with a gentleman after all.

Fourth, as a CEO, your job is to lead your company to create value. You’re not a street vendor. So don’t use street vendor tactics, counter offering with half of what the other party is offers.

If your company depends wholly on that technology, pay the full price. Hell, even pay a little bit more as a good intention. So the other party willingly to put a little effort here and there while you cook up the permanent solution.

The price will be justifiable as long as you know how to create 10x value out of it. Even an elementary kids knows how to cut price, a good CEO is someone that can create value out of something.

Fifth, don’t ask advice from anyone. There’s only two outcome from asking advice to regular people. The first outcome they would only repeat and embolden the points you already make. The second outcome they would blame the whole thing on you.

If you want to ask, ask someone that knows the Industry. Or someone that have been in a similar position. Different from regular people, they will give you insight, steps to handle your problem. Or maybe give a whole different solution. Something that you never think of.