As a business owner when you are starting a new brand, here's what an obvious to-do list can look like: you need a product or service, a name for your brand, a logo & a website. While these are solid foundations to build your brand, these are just the beginning of a never-ending road to building your brand.
A common misconception from first-time startup founders is that the most important aspect of their “startup idea” is that it should be original and novel. The large majority of successful startups are not created with an original idea; most often there are several companies that start more or less concurrently in a given space. For example, Google was not the first search engine; Facebook was not the first social network.
Why do cofounders usually start to fight? Either because they can not agree on how to split equity in the beginning or later when a cofounder leaves prematurely. The former can be solved over a long weekend usually. The latter can lead to costly legal battles and the ruin of your company.
In this article I want to talk about an aspect of web development I don't see discussed that often: Offline first apps and more specifically the combination of PouchDB and CouchDB being used for this purpose.
As a Startup ourselves we know that (Startup) life can be challenging during the bootstrapping period. Startups who are looking for funding need to prove their business model before talking to investors, usually by getting user traction or some kind of market validation.
That means either investing a lot of their own time or finding supporters to accelerate the process. Assuming that finding and compensating potential cofounders, supporters, freelancers or other service providers is simple and realistic, is it also more effective than receiving traditional money investment, especially in the early phase?
Splitting equity is often a neglected topic and done at the last minute. However, it provides an important foundation for the success of your company, so I have asked myself if there is one formula that would allow everyone to get it right.