Question

Congratulations! You have decided to leave your career as a personal tax accountant to pursue a startup idea you have been thinking about for a long time. You are going to launch a new app that tracks all of your personal tax information throughout the year, so that you don’t have to load anything come tax time. You want this app to fully integrate with users payroll, investment accounts, and any other system that creates tax liability. You have validated this as a pain and see tremendous potential. You are an expert on personal taxation with over 10 years in the industry, but you are ready for a new challenge. About You: You do not have skills as a software developer, but you are excellent at tax law and procedures. You have never raised money before, but you have friends that are entrepreneurs that might know some investors. You have some experience in customer relations, but you have never run a full marketing campaign, especially for an online company. You know you cannot launch this company alone and have decided that you want to add at least one partner to the help you build this product. Through extensive networking and interviewing you have narrowed your search down to three individuals. All have expressed interest in joining your team for the right deal. Here are the three individuals:

1) Your former co-worker Jane. Jane has never worked in a startup environment, but she started her career as a very junior software engineer at Turbo Tax, a popular and large online tax program. Jane moved to your accounting firm where she was a software engineer for your firm’s internal accounting software. She has 15 years of experience as a software engineer and is well regarded as a strong engineer. You like Jane but only know her professionally. Jane is open to different roles with the new venture.

2) Your Aunt Jessica has expressed an interest in joining your team. Jessica has 25 years of experience starting and running a successful lifestyle business. Last year, out of nowhere, her company was acquired for $10 million. She wants a new opportunity and is willing to invest her time and some money, but wants an active role in management of the company, meaning you might take more of a product development role.

3) Through a networking event you met a serial entrepreneur named Maya. Maya started her career as a software developer, and has developed several different apps that she has tried to turn into startups. One of her apps, a grocery-tracking program, raised $2.5 million from angel investors and venture capitalists. After 3 years she had to close the company when they were unable to raise additional capital. You have been given positive recommendations from a friend who worked with Maya in the past, but you worry about her focus and if she will be motivated. Maya is looking to be a true co-founder in any venture she undertakes. Question

1A?: Evaluate the following candidates and make a decision on which candidate to hire. Be sure to evaluate the pros and cons of ?each person? in your answer: (20pts) Question

1B:? Based on who you decided to bring on the team, tell me what ?role/title? they should have and ?propose an equity package? that you think would convince them to join the team. ?Be sure to justify why you divided equity this way, it is not enough to just give me numbers?. (20pts)

Answer 1

Hiring the entrepreneur Maya would be the most appropriate selection as he knows about development of applications which is a future technology and going to be very beneficial for an organisation. As your company is totally based on the application based marketing. Maya would definitely enable you to develop better application which would be easier to maintain and 2 for the develop. As Maya is an application developer and already know about pros and cons regarding development of an application for the organisation it would be really appropriate to hire her for your new joint venture.
An application based businesses directly requires better understanding of the computer systems and relying on other companies for development of your own application would not be appropriate as it would reduce the overall effectiveness of the specific criteria and also question the security aspect of the organisational approach.
By looking at the above factors we can see that hiring Maya as a candidate for your selection would be appropriate as she has the skills and understanding of the specific market as well as environment in which you are going to invest.

In the beginning Maya should be given the role of the chief application developer. having an understanding of the specific environment of the application development would definitely enable your company to be more innovative towards the development of the company and to generate greet a revenue from the same market.