Phoney

They say that, for entrepreneurs, being early is often a bigger problem than being wrong.

Three years back, I suggested that Verizon’s iPhone launch would cripple the Verizon network – an incoming exodus of unhappy AT&T customers eating up Verizon’s network capacity – while in turn leaving AT&T’s network relatively fast and problem-free for the customers who stayed behind.

A year later, however, AT&T was still slow and regularly dropped our calls, so Jess and I headed over to Verizon with everyone else.

In the beginning, it seemed a great move. But, in the time since, my 4G connection speeds in NYC have increasingly ground to a halt.

Now, Verizon is admitting that it can’t keep up with their increased LTE demand, while several friends still on AT&T have expressed joy in their connections zipping along.

It appears my predictions were just a bit ahead of their time. I may not be able to check my email, but I can at least take solace in knowing I was right.

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Get it On Paper

I’ve often noted that, in any partnership, both partners believe they do two-thirds of the work.

Interesting, then, to see Ben Franklin’s advice on this front, in his Autobiography:

>Partnerships often finish in quarrels; but I was happy in this, that mine were all carried on and ended amicably, owing, I think, a good deal to the precaution of having very explicitly settled, in our articles, every thing to be done by or expected from each partner, so that there was nothing to dispute, which precaution I would therefore recommend to all who enter into partnerships; for, whatever esteem partners may have for, and confidence in each other at the time of the contract, little jealousies and disgusts may arise, with ideas of inequality in the care and burden of the business, etc., which are attended often with breach of friendship and of the connection, perhaps with lawsuits and other disagreeable consequences.

Relatedly, it appears Ben was also an early angel investor (seriously), backing young printers in other cities by putting up the capital to buy their equipment in exchange for 50% of the profits:

>The partnership at Carolina having succeeded, I was encourag’d to engage in others, and to promote several of my workmen, who had behaved well, by establishing them with printing-houses in different colonies, on the same terms with that in Carolina. Most of them did well, being enabled at the end of our term, six years, to purchase the types of me and go on working for themselves, by which means several families were raised.
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