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Aaron
What it would actually take to build Sunrise together.
Not a pitch. A working proposal with the uncomfortable parts left in, so we can decide the right things now instead of finding disagreement in month nine.
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Aaron
Not a pitch. A working proposal with the uncomfortable parts left in, so we can decide the right things now instead of finding disagreement in month nine.
Two consultants who do similar things merging is usually a bad idea. It combines the overhead without combining the revenue, and you end up with a bigger generalist instead of a better business. We should name that before we talk about anything fun.
We overlap heavily on services. Marketing, AI consulting, discovery, building things. That overlap is not the asset. The asset is that our networks barely touch and our strengths sit on opposite ends of the same job.
Sunrise doesn't launch as a wider menu. It launches as the same menu pointed at twice the market, with one of us selling while the other builds, instead of both of us doing all four jobs badly at once.
Before we talk structure, we should both look at the same number, because it sets the honest timeline. Move the sliders. This is what Sunrise has to gross for it to replace what we each already make.
What Sunrise needs to bill before either of us can stop taking outside work.
Assumes a 10% origination cut that flows back to whichever of us sourced the deal, so it counts toward partner take-home. Freelance cost comes out of the delivery pool.
If we go in thinking this replaces our income by spring, one of us bails in month eight feeling misled. If we go in knowing it's a year-plus, we build it properly and keep our legacy work running underneath without guilt.
This is the single most important decision in the whole thing, and it's the one most partnerships handwave. Every dollar Sunrise collects splits three ways before either of us gets paid.
10 to 15% off the top to whoever brought the deal, paid on collected revenue for as long as that client pays us.
Why: it makes us both actually sell instead of quietly waiting for the other guy to fill the pipeline.
15 to 25% stays inside Sunrise. Brand, website, tools, marketing, and the reserve that eventually lets us drop legacy clients.
Why: skip this and we're not a business. We're two freelancers sharing a logo.
Everything left, split by who did the work, including account management. Freelance cost comes out of here, not out of the house.
Why: whoever carries the project carries the upside, and hiring help stays a real decision with a real cost.
Put in a realistic deal and see who gets what. Then put in the deal that worries you and see if it still feels fair.
One project, one month.
Over twelve months this one client is worth $29,640 to Aaron, $41,160 to Carl, and $24,000 to the business.
Push it right and our per-project take drops, but our capacity goes up and neither of us is the bottleneck. That tension is the whole business in one control. My honest position: we should be uncomfortable early rather than trapped later.
Neither of us can afford a partnership that puts our existing income at risk. So the rule needs to be simple enough that it never needs a debate at 9pm on a Friday.
Any client either of us had before day one is 100% yours. Forever. No cut, no reporting, no discussion.
Any client neither of us had before day one goes through Sunrise. Full stop, regardless of who found them.
Legacy client buys something new? If it needs the other partner or a Sunrise freelancer, it's Sunrise work. If you can do it yourself the way you always have, it's yours.
Pick an answer before you read mine. If we disagree on any of these, that's the conversation we need to have.
Non-circumvention. If you introduce someone from your network and that person hires me direct eighteen months later, origination credit still applies. We should write that down now, while we both feel generous about it.
My strong recommendation is that we do not decide equity right now. We have zero shared revenue and no evidence we can sell together, scope together, or survive a bad project together. Deciding the cap table today is buying a house on the second date.
No new entity. Sunrise LLC stays as is. You operate as a partner-level contractor on a written revenue share, and both of us keep our legacy books completely separate.
Origination, house, delivery. Same rules for both of us, applied to every project without exception.
Covering the split, the bright line, decision rights, and a written intent to revisit equity at month six against defined milestones. No lawyer needed yet.
It gives us six months of real data on the only question that matters, which is whether we can actually do this together when something goes wrong.
If the trial works, you earn in against contribution. Revenue sourced and time committed, measured, not remembered differently by each of us a year later.
I hold the majority through the earn-in because the brand, the entity, and the delivery infrastructure came in at the start. The exact percentage is open. Bring your number.
Valuation formula, what triggers a buyout, and what happens if one of us badly outperforms. Written while we're both optimistic, not while we're both angry.
Small money against the cost of getting it wrong. We split it.
Everything in this phase is negotiable. It exists so you can see the shape of the deal, not so you can accept it.
Whoever owns the domain decides. The other one gets a strong opinion, not a veto. A short list stays unanimous: taking on debt, the first full-time hire, any spend over an agreed threshold, firing a client, and ending the partnership. And we name one person we both respect as a tiebreaker for when we're genuinely stuck. Costs nothing, probably saves this thing once.
Fair is fair, so here's my constraint out loud. My whole reason for building Sunrise is to stop being the one doing all the work. If we partner and you're the stronger closer, the path of least resistance puts me in the delivery seat permanently, and in twelve months I'm in Figma at 11pm because a freelancer flaked.
That means we build the freelance bench in month one, before we need it, and it means sometimes we take a smaller margin to keep the machine working. If that's a problem for you, better we find out now. Your turn: what's the constraint you need written down?
Partnerships that die slowly do more damage than the ones that end cleanly. Let's decide the breakup terms while we still like each other.
If we miss badly two quarters running, we revert to a referral relationship with no hard feelings and a pre-agreed handshake on how the brand and any live clients get handled. On the brand specifically, my position is that Sunrise stays with me unless the earn-in has completed, and I'd rather say that out loud now than have it be awkward later. Live Sunrise clients go with whoever owns the relationship, with a fair split on work in progress.
Skip the easy ones. These are the ones that actually predict whether this works. Tick them off as we get through them.
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