Member-only story
I don’t why, but years ago, when I was in high school, my Dad got involved in a business building replicas of old classic cars. As I remember it, the company bought old VW? engines, put a classic car chassis around them and sold the cars at a profit.
The idea wasn’t my Dad’s. It was one of his buddies from high school who was always coming up with fly by night ideas. This idea was no different. The company quickly flamed and burned to the ground, probably taking some of my Dad’s money with it.
The business failed because the idea sucked. But my Dad should have known better. After all, he was violating one of the basic laws of any startup:
You want to limit the number of moving parts when you start a business.
When you think of starting a business, a moving part is anything that’s different. For example, you’ve already got one moving part because you’ve started a new company.
The second moving part is you have a new team in a new environment.
Each moving part adds risk to your company. And as backwards as it may sound, one of your primary jobs as the founding CEO is to reduce risk every chance you get.
