I've recently been made redundant due to covid, and am looking to start a consulting firm offering virtual-fd services and ad hoc advice (i.e financial modelling, fundraising support, reporting and much more) to early stage and growth companies. I have extensive experience working with start up companies and am relatively well connected. I've developed my business plan and am working on the branding with an agency. However, I really do not like the idea of working alone and I'm very keen to find an equal partner in the business, a technically strong ACA or ACCA accountant (I am CIMA) who has similar experience of working with small companies. My friends who work in accountancy mostly work for big firms and I would not want to risk working with a friend anyway. Does anyone know how I might find such a person? Are there any specific networking events or forums?
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Might be worth working as a contractor for one of the existing virtual FD firms to begin with? They'll have a pool of clients already
Oh and location matters
Done that - the key to it is how you get your clients.Try it on your own first to see if it can work. Having a partner is a good idea but why not from a different skill eg marketing. This broadens the scope of what you can offer. We found found that clients first wanting one skill then often migrated to the other
Good luck - it's scary initially but great fun long term
You possibly ought to give an idea re your/proposed business location, you might find your Blind Date on this very site, prospectives could PM you
It's a very personal decision, but I think most of the sole practitioners on here would run a mile from partnership.
I would run from an accountancy partnership.but marketing people are strangely different. with interesting attitudes
My take on it (I use "partnership" in the broad sense rather than the legal) :Interesting. What are the main reasons you would run a mile? Would be useful to go into this with my eyes wide open!
a) Chose self employment to be my own boss. Why dilute that by sharing decisions with a partner?
b) What if one partner doesn't pull their weight, but profit share stays unchanged?
c) Partnership is like a commercial marriage. Needs a lot of work and compromise from both parties to make it work. Can be messy/acrimonious to "divorce". May require a "pre-nup".
Partnerships can work if both have their niches and there is not too much trespassing, unless of course you are solicitors in which case you will eventually end up litigating yourselves to oblivion.
Whilst most partnerships we come across via our work are family ones not all are, I am employed by a partnership owned by two individuals, unconnected by family, who have managed to rub along together since the mid 1970s , each brings something different to the table and they are both smart enough to recognise this fact.
I think partnership is often thought of as a solution to a problem. If the problem is defined more precisely, usually there is another solution that isn't such a sledgehammer.