In my decade plus in business, I have seen now 4 of my employees go off “on their own way” so to speak. I have also seen it happen to my colleagues. Actually, the manner in which is happened to my mentor is a story for the ages, but not my story to tell.
I have made a point recently to study how other “splinter businesses” have been successful or otherwise.
The successes usually look like “John was the head of sales at Company Y, and then started his own private auction service in the same industry, and Company Y works closely with Johns new company X”. Or the classic “John was Tom’s protege. John had developed a speciality for X, which Tom saw little use for in his products. John went off to start his own business for X, and Tom recommends John’s products using X technology, even if there’s some overlap with what Tom and John worked on together”
I find these to be 2 examples of uniquely positive spinoffs that promote the ideals of entrepreneurship and skilled tutelage. After all, it’s important that craftspeople pass down their skillset to the next generation, or their kids if available and interested. It’s also assumed that this all only pans out positively if the splintering party has no undisclosed or otherwise soon-to-be-known transgressions.
In the keyboard world, I saw my mentor survive a brutal splintering, followed by a positive triple splinter some many years later. It’s quite heartening to see his old crew all running their own successful operations. One does much of what he (Ken Rich) does, the other just does hammond organs and Leslies, and the other just does custom tolex wrappings. All 3 of these guys have one thing in common; they respect where they came from.
In synthesizers, we can look at a company like JL Cooper. Cooper was a top engineer at Oberheim. He started JL Cooper Electronics providing midi retrofits and other modifications for the Oberheim line of products and other brands as well. Oberheim seemed to more or less endorse these retrofits in the early days of it. I think Cooper even ran JLCE while employed by Oberheim Electronics.
On the contrary in synths, we can look at a company like Aries. From the head designer (Dennis Colin) at ARP, we have a company that took their experience from their ARP days and decided to directly compete with their former employer. One finds themselves on the Mt Rushmore of synthesizers, one certainly doesn’t.
Polyfusion is another synth example of employees, this time from Moog, starting their own business after their module improvement ideas were supposedly rejected by Moog higher-ups. Polyfusion originally splintered off and sold Moog-compatible modules, but ultimately began directly competing with their own systems before eventually exiting the synth market and focusing on custom electronics (similar to JL Cooper, actually).
In business period, there are countless examples of employees becoming founders in the same industry. If you find yourself wanting that same trajectory, here are my thoughts and suggestions:
- Decide early on if you plan to be a competitor or ally. It’s simple to become the former, but requires a pattern of clean ethics to be the latter. If you’ve already done dirty business, like undercut your employer to potential clients or tarnishing vendor relationships, you’re unlikely to be able to maintain any kind of goodwill with your soon to be former employer. Assume that karma will inevitably become a factor, too.
- Discuss becoming their colleague, not their competitor. Take into consideration how your splintering can cause potential harm to the company or person that brought you up, and take active steps to mitigate adverse results. Not taking those steps is an act of greed. Greed is rarely rewarded positively in the near or long term.
- Acknowledge challenges when possible. Entrepreneurs typically like finding out their issues weren’t so unique.
- Above all else, pay respect while standing on your own. We become better entrepreneurs when we pay respects to our OG’s. We also become better entrepreneurs when we own our trajectory. Pretending you did it on your own is just living in the shadow of your former employer.
