How early in the startup timeline do you involve a business development person? The BD person may have a diff perspective than your vision. So would you rather hold onto your vision and belief or dilute your original idea and get onto what the biz person tells you?
How long is a piece of string?<p>Every business is different. Sometimes there simply aren't useful jobs within a company for business development folks. Sometimes it's the most important task. Only you can know that about your own company.<p>We just started involving someone in a business development role, and we've been in business for about three years. And we're just experimenting with it, with a friend who happens to have some free time right now.<p>Also, I'm not sure why you'd bring on someone that doesn't share your vision. If it's your company, you get to decide who you work with.
I know there have been more than a few businesses that succeeded based on killer partnership deals. I'm not a big fan though. I've seen incredible amounts of valuable time and energy wasted on partnerships. Probably 99% of them turn out to be totally useless. You're seriously gambling if you spend a significant amount of your resources trying to find that killer deal that will make your company.<p>I think for most early stage startups you should almost completely ignore any kind of interaction with other companies. Only once you have a ton of users or revenue can you afford to take some chances on deal making. Until then it's more likely you hurt you more than help you.<p>It's really a matter of efficiency. Working on your core product, gaining users, and making money is almost certain to be rewarded. Working on partnerships is almost certain to be a waste of time. Do you really have extra time or energy to waste?<p>Keep your head down. Let your competitors chase partnerships. Let them make fancy joint press releases. While they're busy looking good you can be busy becoming great.
The CEO should be the bizdev person for as long as it's possible. At least that's how we do it. Once you moved up the Sales Learning Curve, you can start hiring bizdev and sales people to consolidate and grow like crazy.