In a successful start-up, it's easy to get caught up in the notion that everything you touch will turn to gold. There will be so much money, that money itself will never be a problem. This emotional state is described in some circles as "drinking your own Kool-Aid".

-

Although there is much glory, glamour and hoopla in founding an attention generating business, such as an international Net company, the bottom line is the founder wants and needs to walk away with financial rewards, not just large doses of limelight and the fleeting attention of a fickle media and public. All too often, your press clippings are almost all you walk away with and they make it even more painful and ironic to contemplate how your share of the rewards could have just gone up in smoke.

This unfortunate experience is true for many entrepreneurs, but it is doubly true for women founders of businesses, for a variety of reasons.

Living in a Dream

At first, when one is caught up in the heady excitement of a start- up which is generating world wide attention, when you have dozens of magazines chasing you down for an interview, and you are featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, it's easy to get caught up in the notion that everything you touch will turn to gold. There will be so much money, that money itself will never be a problem. This emotional state is described in some circles as "drinking your own Kool-Aid."

Counting on Others to Share Your Values

You are a fair, generous and sharing person. You believe in team work and cooperation. In other words, you are a woman. Most men are brought up in rougher sports where they understand that everything is about winning and the prize doesn't necessarily go to the best sport, but the one who managed to make the touch down, even if he had to crash into people, knock them down, climb over them and knee them in sensitive parts when the coach wasn't looking. This is not a tea party. It's business and it's about winning.

The founder of one of Net businesses getting the most buzz today is a woman who got left out of the money because she naively found herself some Silicon Valley partners, and put the business in all of their names, making her partners the majority voters and her the odd man out, literally, as they proceeded to sell the company right out from under her.

Believing that Vision is Enough

Vision is great, but Indians in the mountain villages in Mexico, get high on peyote and have gorgeous visions which are sometimes temporarily transferred in psychedelic colors to their stucco walls. Vision alone may produce powerful art or emotion or experience of the moment but vision alone does not produce and can not sustain great business. That takes vision tempered with experience, management, logistics, structure, technical expertise, industry knowledge and people savvy.

It Takes Two To Tango: The Leader and the Manager

Often thought to be a dichotomy, much has been written, most notably by Peter Drucker, on the differences between a leader and a manager. In short, a leader has the ability to inspire people, to transmit a vision, to move people to want to accomplish it. Think Martin Luther King, Jr. and his "I have a dream" oratory. A manager is someone who oversees all the most minute machinations of achieving that vision, who oils the wheels, and greases the springs, who fires up the heat, or cools off the motor, to make the engine run better and keep on track towards the vision. Think Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve; no Henry Ford who envisioned an automobile for every family, but never-the-less a person of considerable impact who keeps the machinery running as it should, a critical function not usually in the skill set of a visionary.

It does happen occasionally that the traits of both these people are found in one person, but that is rare, and usually one side dominates.

If You're a Visionary, Get Advice From a Business Person

If you're a visionary, you definitely should line up a business person to help set up your business systems and procedures and to look at your whole structure from a hard-nosed business point of view. Often, many procedures which are extraordinarily simple to set up in the beginning, become incredibly complex after a business has been ongoing for a number of months or years. The female entrepreneur mentioned earlier went out and got people in a dozen different cities to join in her venture. This got her business off to a roaring and impressive start. However, the local partners set up their own databases of clients and were reluctant to turn them over to a central authority. A speed bump like this is a non-issue if set up correctly in the beginning, but can become a deal killer later on, if you attempt to change it.

Bring in the Big Guns: Lawyers and Accountants

The truth is, the only realistic way to protect yourself is to hire the best lawyer you can afford, let him wear the black hat, and write extensive protection into every document you sign which will cover every single aspect of your business.

It may not be very warm and cuddly to say " I have to run this by my lawyer, and abide by his iron whim." Even if it makes you wince, it's a lot easier to learn to do this than to live with no stock, no ownership and no 401 K because your associates have walked away with it.

This is not a popularity contest, it's your financial life or death. Plus, who wants to be known as "not too sharp on the fiscal details" or " easy to exploit"? Protect yourself and you will by respected for it by everyone including yourself.