Someone on Quora asked:
Should I give up trying to build a startup?
I’m 37 years old living in the middle of Sweden. I have spent nights and weekends during the last 12 months to build my new service. It’s in the domain that I’ve worked in for the last 20 years.
I’m quite good at what I do and the service solves a problem that I and many others experience frequently. I have a small B2B customer base (about 20 companies) . There are very few competitors (other than the traditional way of handling the domain problem).
The problem is that I’m about 75% innovator and 25% entrepreneur. I have a hard time coming up with the next steps to build the company. I think that I’m a bit too technical to build a solid business but have failed to find a more business minded partner.
I don’t want to spend the next year building the company at nights and weekends. So I guess I have to manage to raise money in some way. Would I ever be able to do so despite that I’m the only founder (and a technical one)?
This was my response:
You’ve proven a need with your product in acquiring 20 customers. However, it seems you aren’t the proper person who will be able to expand the service into the hands of enough people.
You need a cofounder with a marketing / sales / business development background. Someone like me who can excel your business and drive results. Probably not me specifically, but someone like me.
I usually have the opposite problem, finding someone who is actually qualified to build out a platform to market. People like me have no issues in acquiring clients for a product or service we believe in. However, we do have major issues in finding people who have created a service like yours to partner with. Your situation just happens to be the exact opposite of ours.
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Originally posted on Quora.
Leonard Kim consults startups and writes books like The Etiquette of Social Media: How to Connect and Respond to Others in the World of Social Media