Surprisingly, very little changed or was accomplished between late June and mid-to-late July. Partner 1 hadn’t looked at the Prototype 1 code I’d sent him and seemed to be idling as not much else had been completed on his end. Partner 2 was still incognito waiting for the other shoe to drop with her company. I was idling as a result of both. This was frustrating and I feared that we were losing momentum, that we were nowhere near incorporating and that all would be lost.
I ended up speaking with Partner 1 about this and his spirits were still high. We decided that screwing over Partner 2 was not the way to go, that if necessary we could run the company with two people, and that I should take a week off, which I did. In the future, I should note that when starting a business things that involve the product and the organization must take precedence over personal setbacks or indecision. It’s only fair to those who want to move forward.
(At some point along the line, Partner 2 sent us a matrix of company types and noted her interest as us incorporating as an s-corp. I forget when this took place exactly.)
I decided in July 2009 that product 1 involved the solution of problems A & B. Product 2 involved the solution of problems A, B, & C. I realized that Prototype 1 only involved a partial solution of problem A, so I rewrote it. Then I started to tackle Problem B but got stuck.
Partner 1 and I had a meeting somewhere in July and mapped out what our v1, v2, and v3 products would look like. During this meeting, we solved the sticking point, and looking back I should’ve been able to solve it myself — and way earlier. But whatever, at least I was able to solve problems A & B in their entirety after another week. I did a super rough cut of problem C to meet the deadline for a meeting I had with Partner 1 in mid July but it was nowhere near completion. I just needed something to show.
By mid-July, we were still missing a business plan. It’s not my forte to do things like business plans, and even though I should learn, both Partner 1 and Partner 2 had executed business plans in the past, so there was no reason for me to be spending cycles on a business plan at this point — since I was already spending 3 hours in the morning and 6 hours at night (before and after a day at my career job) to write code for Prototype 2. At this point I just didn’t have the cycles or inclination to write a business plan.
During his visit a few days later, we walked through Prototype 2 and its code, and Partner 1 produced a business plan to show me. To be honest, I was shocked as practically nothing had happened on the business end: EVER. We reviewed the business plan and I actually found it to be great. I started to be excited again and felt not so weary as I’d had for the past 2-3 weeks.
The only gating factor now was with the availability of Partner 2. I explained to Partner 1 that we needed a drop-dead date from her since two months had passed with zero change in her status and that we either needed to find a new businessperson or we needed to go it alone. It was agreed that the first Monday in August would be the deciding day. I figured I already knew the outcome, but fine, what was another two weeks?
