If The Shoe Fits

Sometimes it doesn't and you need to move on. Let me explain.

Recently I had a funding opportunity presented to me. The deal was to work with a preset team of people (with research, marketing and sales skills; note here that there are no programmers but myself on the team) to launch an online business. Each team member would own an even cut of 49% and the funding source would own 51%. My cut would end up being about 8% of my own idea. It seemed a bit lopsided to me but, funding is hard to come by so I presented the companion website to my book, Calculated Leap. What I discovered was - as soon as I presented the idea, it was liked but everyone on the team wanted creative control of the idea and immediately wanted to change it.

I thought to myself, I guess I can give up some creative control and I continued down the path. As the team worked on it the idea it started to become something else and I began to see that I was not going to be able to recognize it soon. I started to realize that I wasn't just giving up some creative control, I would ultimately have to give it all up. At that point the 49-51 split (which to me was really a 8-92 split) started to feel too steep of a compromise and I pulled out of the proposal.

What I learned was, not every funding shoe fits and you need to find the right one for your project.