My business partner and I currently find ourselves in a situation where we have a product that we're about ready to sell, but we have almost no business experience between us. We also feel that it would be silly to try and put on the business hat; us doing business would effectively take us away from what we do best and it would assign our time toward something we know very little about. That said, we'd like to find a CEO/cofounder. Given our situation, we really don't know where to start with this. We have no money with which to pay them, so the only thing we could offer at the current time is a percentage of ownership. The company itself is based on a business model of developing technology for licensing, and we intend to branch out into publishing. We feel the technology could be a development cost cutter, and could potentially allow us to fund independent projects with less money. That said, if we grow the company properly, it could potentially be extremely successful. And of course, like most start-ups, it could simply fail. I suppose it would depend on how well our technology and business model is received, but given the aforementioned situation, is it even possible (or likely) to find someone given these circumstances? Are we simply stuck doing the business stuff ourselves? Kevin B

My take is that it depends on how profitable your technology is. If you've got something particularly novel with business potential, you could try and find some venture capital. That was an option presented to us at grad school, so we could consider the potential of forming tech spin-offs from our research if it happened to be commercialiable. If your tech is good, a seasoned investor might have contacts for good business oriented people to fill your CEO position, with you as the technical advisor.

However this does all hinge on what kind of tech you're considering. The investors we spoke to were more into patentable technology straight from research schools. Game technology is probably too much of a risk for them.

Hi ebray99,

I have been an entrepreneur coming up to 2 years now, I do like to keep my eye in the sky and keep up to date with the latest R&D. So if you could PM me with a little more detail, you never know something may come of it. Business advice should be free.

Best Regards,
Mark Fraser,
Managing Director of Aero Astro Arts Ltd.