Sunday, July 30, 2017

Should I take this deal?


Is founding this company a good idea with these terms and conditions? Kind of a longer story, so buckle up.So I work as a Facebook ad freelancer, have a masters degree in media management and 2 years in digital marketing under my belt, and handled one big social media project (very big with lots of PR). I'd say I'm well versed in what I do.Now, 4 months ago I met a business angel who was interested in me, we met a couple of times, he introduced me to another angel and proposed their idea to me: they both have backgrounds in CRM and e-commerce (one built and sold a big CRM company, the other one has an agency for Magento) and want to start a performance marketing agency for e-commerce. Cool, I love building a business! Would be my third try already, only this time with structure. Now we all have really good chemistry, speak as equals, great basis. They also found a fourth guy who I like and is a Google ad words pro. I'd handle social ads.Here's the part where it got tricky.When they showed me their idea and contracts on how to finance this, I was... Surprised. They both invest 20k into a GmbH (German version of LLC to say), so 40k in total. They each get 40 percent equity, so together at 80 they control pretty much everything. Google guy and I start out each with 10, after a year and a half they transfer another 10 to each. So after the year and a half the equity is 30 30 20 20.I'd be okay with that, but let's talk salary. My salary on the market would be like 2-2.5k/month before taxes. Since they don't want to invest more, they'll pay us 800/month plus we get what's left after revenue minus fixed costs per months (don't know the term sorry). Which would make it 1.5k per month, unless we have zero revenue.My biggest concerns are 3 things: 1.They own so much equity that they can decide anything. If we want a higher salary, we gotta negotiate it with them. 2. Google guy and I work as managing directors, which means when things go south we are personally responsible for any wrong doings. Without having much say in how we decide big things. 3. The salary is a bad joke and their argument of 'gotta earn your shares' is weak since I can't even sell these unless they agree.So.... So far everything worked out fine with them, and we really do talk as equals, but I fear for the moment we disagree strongly. They can decide it all. If it works out, they get nice profits and can (theoretically) block our higher salaries. If it doesn't, we are legally responsible for it and they are not, since they only act as majority shareholders.I really like them and I did a lot of research on them, they have good track records, are financially stable and just good people. But it feels like they aren't risking a lot for a huge potential upside (not a lot of good competition), while keeping us on the leash.Thanks for reading! Would love an opinion. via /r/business http://ift.tt/2u8O1Dt

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