My old boss in Austin said to never hire friends, and after my co-founder's cousin nearly sank our launch with a missed deadline, I finally get it.

He missed a key software update for our beta test in March, forcing us to delay by two weeks and costing us about $5k in extra marketing spend to reset the buzz. How do you handle setting clear rules with people you're close to when you bring them into the business?

4 comments

4 Comments

miles_hall2mo ago

Ever think about just writing everything down before they even start? I mean, I had a buddy help me with a side project once and we almost fell out over something dumb like who was paying for the cloud storage. We didn't write it down, just assumed, and it got messy. Maybe it's just me but now I make a stupidly simple one page doc that says who does what and when money gets talked about. It feels awkward at first but it saves the friendship later.

bennett.evan26d ago

Yeah man I feel you on that. I had a similar thing with my cousin where we were gonna flip some furniture we found cheap and split the profit. We just talked it out over beers and it was all good until we actually made some money and suddenly he thought his cut should be bigger because he did the sanding. That one page doc thing felt weird when I suggested it for our next project but honestly it saved us. I wrote down "Evan finds the pieces and handles pickup, cousin does the refinishing, we split 50/50 after materials" and that was it. No lawyer stuff, just plain language. We actually worked better after that cause neither of us was constantly wondering if the other was gonna pull something. It takes like ten minutes and stops all the silent resentment from building up. Better to feel awkward for a few minutes than to lose someone over a couple hundred bucks.

allen.kai2mo ago

Honestly that "write everything down" advice from @miles_hall sounds good on paper but it kills the vibe. If you're bringing in a friend or family member, it's because you trust them, right? A one page doc feels like you're expecting them to mess up before they even start. The real fix is just talking like adults more often, not making it a legal thing. That missed deadline sucks, but a simple convo about how bad it hurt the project probably would've worked better than a rulebook. Too much formal stuff can ruin the exact trust you wanted in the first place.

the_thea2mo ago

But @miles_hall is right, a simple doc sets the vibe from the start so you can actually relax and trust each other!