Don't be a lonely King

Image via WikipediaA very quick post. In the course of meeting with companies (many of whom are run by friends), I've noticed that many companies in India have very low stock ownership even at a startup level. The founders tend to be techno-commercial guys (like myself) who are very used to selling and negotiating on a daily basis and the 'techies' - i.e. the people actually writing the code seem to be engineers who have never sold a pencil in their lives and probably don't even know how to negotiate with a rickshaw driver. Here the onus is on the founders to be fair and to not negotiate with the employee the best deal you can but to think about what would be fair. Some reasons why being fair is the best thing long term:- 

1. You will be able to get people to think about equity and the bigger aspects of the company, product and cash flow.

2. In tough times, you will be able to get everyone to make some sacrifices in the interest of equity.

3. You will be able to build an ecosystem around your people who in case of an exit would all have a decent amount of money to be enable you to take bigger bets which will take longer to pay off because the engineers - the core people building the product have the liquidity to last.

4. You will make friends and create a set of people who were committed to you in the bad times - guys you have worked with who worked out of bootstrapped offices and ate maggi noodles with who you can now go along with to Vegas, Macau, Thailand and to the best bars and restaurants. Going through life and through such experiences with genuine people is far superior as compared to the kind of people you will attract if you were to make it big but had no friends with that kind of money and had to seek such people out. 

I remember once discussing property prices with a friend of mine and he was trying hard to convince me to try and see if a bunch of us friends could all buy small holiday homes very close to each other. I remarked then that for that price, I would rather buy a large plantation and live like a King. I remember his words then - "Roshan, you might live like a king in your huge plantation, but you'll be a lonely King." - Wisdom.