Hello,
I'm new to this, apologies if this violates any of the rules.
I'm starting a COVID testing company with a friend of mine ("Cindy"
. We were working on opening up shop in St. Paul, MN, but then an opportunity presented itself in Atlanta (free rent in an office building located right next to airport, lots of connections, etc) so we pivoted and quickly set up shop there. It's been open for just a few days now, but has not gotten any customers yet, probably mainly due in part to poor advertising on our part.
But we still have contracts that we signed up in St. Paul. We owe the landlord $2000 plus $1k until March, and a mobile office vendor about $5000 plus $2k/mo until March. The problem is our funds are completely gone. We have all the testing supplies, and there's definitely demand for testing in St. Paul, but we can't open up shop because we don't have money for the landlord or mobile office vendor.
So far, this has been funded by family money. Cindy got $20k from some family members, and now that is gone. I'm normally pretty good with budgets, but I've never actually had access to our business bank account, so I never knew what was going on. Cindy had an LLC under her name already, but never used it until we decided to start this COVID testing company. So I'm not listed on the LLC and have not been able to manage or view the bank account. I guess in the eyes of the law, I'm just a guy who has been volunteering full time for a couple of months.
I have no idea what to do. Neither of us have any business experience, our background is medical. Cindy is freaking out and has been difficult to work with recently. She has a very high-paying full time job, and reassured me when we initially started scheming that she would be able to pay back whatever money we were loaned. She also has an infant to take care of, which doesn't help her stress. I don't have a job anymore, I've been working full time on the startup. Cindy being stressed out is stressing me out big time. She's telling me that if I want to be part of the company I need to put in as much financial investment as her, but I've never had that kind of money. My contribution has been time, technical ability, setting up operations, design work flow, etc.
I think if we can start getting some customers into our Atlanta site, we can start making some money, and that will help us pay our debts in St. Paul, and then we can open up shop there. Maybe we should look into taking out a small business loan? Or I can transfer some of my savings into the business account? It's hard for me to look at this with a clear head right now. Should we just quit?
TL;DR: setting up a COVID testing company. Thought it would be profitable quickly, but it hasn't been, and now we owe money to people. I'm not sure what to do next. Tensions are getting high btwn me and business partner because I haven't (and cannot) contributed financially as much as her.
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