tech-company, ideaI run a successful start up in a niche market which is growing nicely. Due to nature of startup and market size the company, I founded and run the last 5 years, is unlikely to exit more than 50m$. I still put 50-60 hours a week and travel a lot for this operation.
However during the last few years I am exposed to several ideas that could well worth several times of what we do and tech basis for these ideas are very sound. They just need to be implemented.
However our work is not done in this company on the existing markets and product lines. If anything we are off to a great start but exit is still far and requires focus and arduous amount of work.
I am faced with some decisions. These are:
I could start another completely different company raise funding for this and run both at the same time. (Split my time and focus but team stays the same and focused on the existing products/markets)
I could build a second team in my company and try to do it here. (Split my time and teams and split focus of the company but do it with internal resources)
Forget about these new ideas and focus on what I have now.
There are other options but none are very pretty. I do not want to raise money in my existing company but don’t mind raising substantial funds for a new one.
I’d like to ask:
It makes sense if the company your are going to start is either in entirely different field and you can not reuse your existing resources at all, or you want them legally separate. Having a separate operation otherwise does not make much sense because growing the ideas within your existing company could benefit you greatly for you can reuse resources you already have in place - HR, legal, sales, talent. You could in theory form a group of companies, under one umbrella and share resources between them to help bootstrap other ideas. That is a perfectly valid approach. This way you can both raise capital for that other idea (form a different legal entity) and you can reuse what is reusable from your other company to help support the new one. Rinse and repeat.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.