this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Mind if I ask if you have any advice for an aspiring entrepreneur? I had an electronics project that I tried to get off the ground. I managed to teach myself what I needed, but I'm stumped by lack of funding, time, and an aversion to the social aspects. I figure I need to find cofounders who can take on that work, but no one I know has the time, and few if any have the skills. Plus as a self-taught electronics designer, I can't ignore a concern that there could easily be a major mistake that'll affect reliability/lifespan of whatever I produce.
I have ideas in varying stages for electronics and software. Not many I've started on, but a few I've at least started basic planning for.
Sure dude. Sounds like you might have gotten a gray hair or two already dealing with this stuff, prepare for more.
Being an entrepreneur is very hard. It begins rough and doesn’t ever become easier. You just get used to it. One reason why most long time owners are pretty rough around the edges.
First of all: I don’t know how to make a multi person start up work. I did it on my own and employed people instead of searching for partner. Partners were what nearly brought me down.
Thad said, I would probably start with a business plan. Thats what I always do and have done for others as well. Most plans have holes. Writing a business plan uncovers those.
Then you let someone with experience look it over. A tax specialist, a lawyer, someone who knows sales and marketing. Let them poke holes in it, be thankful and go back to the drawing room. Repeat until nobody can poke holes.
At this point you will be feeling like multiple cars ran you over. It’s devastating but if you can stand up after every grueling feedback, your plan and you are ready for war.
Never let anyone you would not trust with your life touch or see it except the mentioned specialists.
Then you start talking to people about your finished idea and see if people want to work with you.
If not, you go to a bank (probably multiple) and pitch your idea. Again, be prepared for gang**pe style feedback and grow with it.
Ultimately someone will trust you. Think of the inventors in history. They ran around with their idea and got thrown out 99 times before someone believed them.
So, welcome to the world of entrepreneurs. Yes, we are insane. If you want to join, you need to become insane as well. Good luck. :)
Apologies for deleting my comment, it seemed a bit out of place but I'm glad you responded. I managed to recover the deleted text, so I'll put that in a spoiler here.
Mind if I ask if you have any advice for an aspiring entrepreneur? I had an electronics project that I tried to get off the ground. I managed to teach myself what I needed, but I'm stumped by lack of funding, time, and an aversion to the social aspects. I figure I need to find cofounders who can take on that work, but no one I know has the time, and few if any have the skills. Plus as a self-taught electronics designer, I can't ignore a concern that there could easily be a major mistake that'll affect reliability/lifespan of whatever I produce.I have ideas in varying stages for electronics and software. Not many I've started on, but a few I've at least started basic planning for.
Thanks, listing out some specific experts to talk to and describing the overall process is helpful! I suppose I'll need to return to that project and work out the remaining bugs, revisit my business plan, talk with some consultants, and then look into funding. Given that my project requires custom-manufactured hardware, the upfront cost could be eye wateringly high, potentially > $100k if I needed to start generating revenue quickly.
It was definitely a challenging few years, between that and everything else going on in my life. I don't mind hard work. I'd rather spend my time doing something meaningful to me than working on whatever a manager dictates I should do. I do need time to relax and recharge, but there's nothing saying I can't do both.
Could you expand on that a little? I've been looking for partners because I've come to understand that certain tasks burn me out quickly, which leads me to think one or more partners will need to take on those tasks in my case. Did you have a bad experience with a partnership? Couldn't find anyone who was competent and interested?
It's hard to find examples of autistic entrepreneurs, and neurodiverse-friendly resources for starting a business are hard to find online. If you were so inclined, I think sharing your experience in a book/website could help a lot of aspiring innovators. (How did you research? What business structures have you tried? What roadblocks did you hit/what solutions did you find that worked for you? How was your experience convincing people to trust/work with you?, etc.)
Glad you find it helpful.
Expanding on the partnership thing:
I initially played with the idea of taking on partners but after some discussions with people I met over time I decided to change my approach.
So I designed the company in a way that makes my personal limits less of a problem. For instance, I coded a custom crm from the ground up. That was because I couldn’t afford a secretary at the time and I made the necessary paperwork come out in one click instead of filling out templates all the time. I also integrated basic bookkeeping so I don’t need to buy and learn more proprietary software. There are a lot of other functions I automated and put in.
So, after avoiding partners initially, I took on someone who used to be a successful employee of mine before. Long story short, they found a flaw in our contracts and took off with like 50k $ and caused roughly a quarter million in damages in the process, not counting me burning out due to the stress.
And in the 10 years of being an entrepreneur, I‘ve heard a vast majority of peers tell me similar stories. The issue is trust. If you are able to not really trust someone you are around all day, that might help but I surely cant. And I think it also hinders progress. Imho, the most successful partnerships happen because people are either equally naive or equally antitrust. The chance of meeting a match is even less likely and infinitely more dangerous than finding your soulmate.
For that reason, I won’t ever search for partners. I either do consulting, being paid for it or employ/contract people who get paid for their work and not having any say in the company itself.
Let me know if you have any more questions. :)
Interesting. It sounds to me like you used your strengths to streamline your process such that your limits don't come up as much. By working towards solutions that accommodated your limits, you built software that would make life easier for anyone (provided they can figure out the software). The same approach would probably work well for me.
Ah, that would make me hesitant to take on partners too. I've had some small setbacks from trusting people, but never quite that much (granted, I've never had that much to lose). Sucks you had that happen. Crazy that it was a previously reliable employee who turned on you like that too.
I don't know that I would be able to work with partners I couldn't trust. Even if I could keep them at arms length and remain suspicious, the added effort of having to handle that on top of everything else wouldn't be worth it, not to mention there would be too high of a chance they'd eventually stab me in the back. If it's a choice between working with someone I can't trust or trying to go at it alone, working alone is definitely a better choice. I agree with you there. I'll keep that in mind as I continue working on this problem. If I do look for a business partner, I'd be looking for someone who comes across as unflinchingly transparent, and whose transparency reveals strong integrity and a collaborative spirit.
You lost me at collaborative spirit. I‘m not into big words to be honest but otherwise you nailed it imo.
I‘d say: do it alone as long as you can and then get people to work for you, not with you. They have clear areas of expertise and definitive borders. Make it a sport to find new responsibilities for them and be incredibly fair but don’t let anyone else take the wheel, trust me.
I think those of us (autists) who are able to work at that level are rather gifted and we still struggle with social clues. Even if you have what it takes to run a company, you probably wont see it coming if someone betrays you.
We are the perfect victim to exploitation. I have been exploited a lot in my life (i do have a history of abuse as a child as well). Most people don’t even know that much about themselves.
But I digress. Let me know if you have any more questions.