I don’t normally talk about work on my blog. Actually rarely will I talk about anything on a public blog that involves someone I know (mostly because I don’t want to be offensive), but anyway….
I’ve learnt of the last few weeks why its not a great idea to go into business with your friends. Sure there are probably thousands of business from tiny to big that are successfully founded on the partnership of friends, but I reckon there are heaps of relationships that have been strained and broken by the pressures of working with your friends and let me tell you its not pretty to be around.
There is one big problem with doing business with friends. And that is having to treat your friends and partners/employees/employers and as friends.
Being with anybody a lot of the time is a big call. Every frustrating detail is magnified to the extreme. With a normal work peer you can get annoyed and wish they would join another department, but at the end of the day you go home and can ignore them - your relationship ends at the door to the building. But with someone whos been your friend for a while, you go home and you are frustrated because they are your friend.
Having a normal work peer hurt your feelings has much less cost on your friendship with them than having a friend hurt your feelings, especially if it is inregards to the business and you want to deal with them as a friend.
I won’t comment on disagreements in business decisions, financial squabbles, and all the other different combinations of problems, but you can start to see some of the dangers (most of which I thankfully have never encountered).
I recommend to anyone starting down this line - if you want to start a successful business with your friends you have to be very good friends and you have to be able to seperate the business from the personal. Set up a set of procedures and stuff for making sure you don’t end up hating each other.
In any case I really hope the stuff at my work is successfully resolved. We are on the virge of releasing the next big thing on the internet and it would be a shame if it was left to bit rott.