View our first journey down the recruiting road in prior posts Executive Recruiting, part 1 and Executive Recruiting, part 1 continuedSo we decided to pass on hiring a banker. It was a pretty frustrating past couple of weeks, but I gained a huge education from this process. I passed it all onto Seth, who was in the loop every step of the way. After much discussion over the past week, Seth and I have decided that hiring a banker was a terrible idea. Instead, we are entertaining the idea of making Mr. Banker an offer to come on-board as a third partner. Given his 20+ experience in venture capital, investment banking, technology and financial services, we think he could probably add much more value as a team member, without all the contractual hurdles we were facing with the consulting agreement. We think that the new business relationship we are proposing will be much cleaner and will hopefully align all of our interests much more closely. We actually began working with Mr. Banker this week under the pretense that we will get a deal done and come to terms with an agreement. We have another meeting with him in a couple days and will make the offer then. We hope that this move will bring the much-needed credibility and execution experience to our company. However, unlike before with Mr. Texas, we are going to structure this as a three-way partnership. We will ask him to buy his stock, much the same way that Seth and I have by investing our own money. We know this is for real if he commits his own money to the venture. The big difference is that we will offer him about 20% of the company over the time, say 3 years, that he stays with the company. We think this is very fair, but will just have to tell you how it goes… JT
