The Technology Conversation Every New Business Should Have (and Almost Nobody Does)

Nobody starts a business by mapping out their technology decisions.

You open the LLC, sign the first client, and work with whatever you have. A personal Gmail. A laptop from Best Buy. A password on a sticky note.

That works for a while. Then it doesn't.

Here's what I see most often when businesses come to me in year two or three:

Business email is tied to a personal Gmail account.

The domain is registered under a contractor's account nobody talks to anymore.

Files are scattered across personal Dropbox, email attachments, and USB drives.

Nobody's sure who has the master passwords to anything.

Backups don't exist.

None of these are hard to set up correctly from the start. All of them are painful to fix later.

The technology decisions you make in year one aren't dramatic. They're quiet. But they compound.

If you're in your first few years of business, it's worth pausing to ask one question: does the business actually own its technology, or is it borrowing access from individuals?