

How early do you involve a bizdev person? - satyajit

How early in the startup timeline do you involve a business development person? The BD person may have a diff perspective than your vision. So would you rather hold onto your vision and belief or dilute your original idea and get onto what the biz person tells you?
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SwellJoe
How long is a piece of string?

Every business is different. Sometimes there simply aren't useful jobs within
a company for business development folks. Sometimes it's the most important
task. Only you can know that about your own company.

We just started involving someone in a business development role, and we've
been in business for about three years. And we're just experimenting with it,
with a friend who happens to have some free time right now.

Also, I'm not sure why you'd bring on someone that doesn't share your vision.
If it's your company, you get to decide who you work with.

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satyajit
Tech vision and Biz vision do not always match. The technology-oriented
founders are married to their vision, and sometimes miss out on long term
sustainability and monetization opportunities. I would guess someone with a
product development and time-to-market strategy will be of great help. Though
you may have to hit a middle ground keeping some of your original belief and
incorporating some of theirs.

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SwellJoe
I have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps you'd like to see a picture
of a bunny with a pancake on his head? Here you go:
<http://heresabunnywithapancakeonitshead.com/>

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staunch
I know there have been more than a few businesses that succeeded based on
killer partnership deals. I'm not a big fan though. I've seen incredible
amounts of valuable time and energy wasted on partnerships. Probably 99% of
them turn out to be totally useless. You're seriously gambling if you spend a
significant amount of your resources trying to find that killer deal that will
make your company.

I think for most early stage startups you should almost completely ignore any
kind of interaction with other companies. Only once you have a ton of users or
revenue can you afford to take some chances on deal making. Until then it's
more likely you hurt you more than help you.

It's really a matter of efficiency. Working on your core product, gaining
users, and making money is almost certain to be rewarded. Working on
partnerships is almost certain to be a waste of time. Do you really have extra
time or energy to waste?

Keep your head down. Let your competitors chase partnerships. Let them make
fancy joint press releases. While they're busy looking good you can be busy
becoming great.

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shafqat
The CEO should be the bizdev person for as long as it's possible. At least
that's how we do it. Once you moved up the Sales Learning Curve, you can start
hiring bizdev and sales people to consolidate and grow like crazy.

