Hi,

I'm having the possibility to start a small company with someone else. I'm a software programmer and been working on a field where there isn't much competition, at least in the platform I'm developing, which is the one with highest market share.

This other person comes from marketing so he would find / provide clients and be in charge of the business side.

So initially it would be me, the tech guy with the knowledge to develop our product and products based on my development, and this person who would become CEO (basically a 50/50 share). The idea is getting a product on our own, but also perform projects for others in order to get some cash.

The problem is that his idea is doing this without initial capital. He tells me that he could get some customers from past business (which is mostly true as he has been in the business for some time) and then with the money obtained from such development, we could hire some freelance developers and build our own platform.

I've already discussed with him that I don't find this the best way, provided that we need to compete against other companies some of who are VC funded and have many developers working fulltime.

But most of all, I'm thinking of whether this is a fair deal to do, provided that this person is not providing anything other than clients, and I'd be the one having to do the work and dedicate time, thus also taking most of the risks. In all fairness, I'd expect him to put some initial capital, given that initially I'm putting some of my code which in some way is money given the time I've dedicated to it.

So the question here is, does this seem fair to you? Is this the way it is usually done? My only concern here is that I don't have previous experience with such deals, and I ignore whether this is the usual thing to do in other cases. Certainly having a marketing person helps a lot. As you probably know being a programmer doesn't make me the most indicated person for marketing ;-) but at the same time I'm not sure if this could be a good deal or I'd just be making a pretty inconvenient deal.

Hope I made my point clear, but feel free to let me know if more details are needed.

Thanks in advance