| My random advice from the internet: + Tap financial resources as you go. You will [hopefully] be iterating. Limiting the amount of cash in the company will reduce the chance of overspending on dead ends. Manage cash flow: 20% of $20k is a lot less than 20% of $100k. + Paying off student debt is foolish. $20k is 10 months living expenses. Over that 10 months loan payments are probably about a quarter of that. That's an extra six months of life. + Divide the company 50/50. If there's success, the 2% difference in equity isn't worth fighting over, the 100% difference in control is. If there's a disparity in initial investment, make it a loan with moderate interest if you must. Otherwise, one founder taking control of the company from the other is within the rules of the game. + Working toward product market fit is more important than building a proto-type. It's also harder because it requires talking to people and changing direction and dealing with rejection rather than going head down building a prototype using familiar skills. + Tap into your 401k when there is a clear business case for doing so. You can't blow it on Aeron Chairs and Macbook Pros and Google Adwords until you've got it to blow. Wait until you really know what you're doing. + How much money you should save depends on the business model. A SAAS can go up on Heroku for ten bucks a month. The first quantum smartphone is another matter. + The worst course of action is to spend six months building something, uveil it, and discover nobody wants it. What you're building is a company. Good luck. |