Before starting a real business, you might consider starting a pretend company.
Instead of starting a company, paying employees and finding the company is not successful, the people don't know how to work effectively, your company just doesn't work, for whatever reason, yet you're investing money in the company and the people, you might consider first starting a pracetice company.
You might even call this company a pretend company. You tell the people you're not sure of the company yet, and/or whether they are able to work together, but you pay them a certain amount to help you find out if this is the company for you.
Let's say you're considering a vending machine company. You're not sure if these are the right people to hire, you're not sure if you're the right person for this type of company. Instead of investing in the company and the people, you start a pretend company. You pay the people maybe $100-$500 rather than a salary. You buy perhaps a couple of vending machines.
You find out with this pretend vending machine company whether this is your company and whether these are the right people to work with.
You make and correct business mistakes that you make and that your "pretend" employees make. You and your "pretend" employees use this pretend company to learn about the business and to learn how to work together in this type of company.
So instead of investing all your money in a vending machine company just to find out this isn't your company, these aren't even the right people to hire, you find this out with your pretend company. Again, however, you must make this perfectly clear to your employees.
This is a strategy that you can use with other types of companies that allow for pretend companies.
You can also set up the company in the form of a business workshop, where the company is a workshop company until the people learn how to do the work and learn how to work together before you set up the "real" company. This is especially the type of company to set up when you are working with people who don't have experience running and manage companies, and do not have experience being the owners of companies.
Online entrepreneurs can also make use of The Bargain Store and Cafepress to help set up their "pretend companies" before setting up their "real companies."
Then if you think this is your company, set up first a private company, again working with the people first, and correcting business mistakes, before your company becomes a public company. Our recommendation is to never go public with a company until you know privately whether this company is workable. Many first-time entrepreneurs make that mistake. Of course, when you start companies on the internet you can continually upgrade the company, as we witness with many internet companies, and certainly it's easier to upgrade an internet company, which is principally a website, than an offline company.
