Howdy, Partner
Starting a business with someone you met online? It's not as scary--or as unusual--as you think.
In this digital age, you can have friends, customers and even
romantic entanglements over the Internet. But starting a business
with someone you've never met, in a virtual environment-can
that work?
Absolutely, says Eileen Parzek, owner of SOHO It Goes!, a
marketing design firm for small businesses based in Albany, New
York. "The Internet set us all free," she says. No longer
bound by physical location, you can have a partner in New Zealand
while you're in Idaho, like Dave Lakhani and Sean D'Souza.
Lakhani, founder and President of Bold Approach, a business
acceleration strategy firm in Boise, Idaho, wanted to start a
speaking and seminar business. He hooked up with D'Souza in New
Zealand, after D'Souza read about Lakhani's original
company in a magazine.
"It's not that different from doing business with
someone in the next state," says Lakhani. There are issues of
trusting someone you've never met, of course. Lakhani notes it
took a few months of telephone calls and e-mails to feel
comfortable enough to enter the new venture with D'Souza. The
product, the Brain Alchemy Master Class, has been available since
August 2004 and they've already held the first seminar and
reaped some profits. The two hope sales for the product's first
year will reach about half a million dollars. A large part of the
sales are expected to come from the Homestudy Version.
Content Continues Below
Though Lakhani and D'Souza met because of a print article,
many people meet virtual partners in the online world-either in
business networking groups or industry groups, says Parzek. And if
entrepreneurs take care to communicate, check references and
histories, spend lots of time talking online and over the phone
before taking the plunge, and establish set duties in writing,
virtual partnerships can be beneficial. "There is a limited
amount of time when we can work on things jointly [in real time]
because of the 18-hour time difference," says Lakhani,
"but it gives us the benefit of being able to work on joint
projects 24 hours a day."
Virtually conquering geography is another plus, and both
entrepreneurs-who plan to meet in person for the first time at the
end of the year-now have an immediate international foothold.