Shoud start business with 7 friends or more?

This question, at least as originally formulated, is difficult to parse. Almost as if English is not your first language.

What I think you are saying is that people shouldn’t do business with friends. So that’s what my answer is about. My apologies if I misunderstood.

I know that many businesses built with friends do founder and the friendship gets messed up as well. However, there are friends who have found a way to work well together. My suspicion is the difference is the success of the business. If the business fails, people blame each other and that kills the friendship. If it works, people are happy and can maintain friendships.

But sooner or later, you must find a way to wall off the friendship from the business, because there are always business decisions you will disagree on. If you take those disagreements home, you will hurt the friendship.

I’m sorry your business was not a success.

Doing business with one friend is risky enough (I know). With seven or more I think it would be a disaster.

I think you are describing the conflict-of-interest sometimes in your relationships when business partners and life friends are the same people.
It seems the same downside is possible with most relationships…
there are some aspects that you despise, perhaps even show-stoppers, along with aspects that compel you to continue .. the mixed bag, compromise.

Sounds like you folks have a deep track record together, but in business it’s hard to avoid the money distortion field that makes what’s important look different.
But if anyone could do it, it seems a group with your deep interconnectedness could accomplish a lot if resources are well acknowledged and applied. Good Luck to you!

I think you should try business partnership with only one or two from outside that group to get practice and learn from other experience.
The long term effect can be to bring new business ideas back into the original group changing the chances of success of another original-group partnership if attempted.

Business partnerships outside the group don’t have to have any beneficial conflict with the original group, they don’t have to be an enemy or opposition to the group.
You may be able to drive a specific kind of business in a way the whole group never would.
And generate resources you can share with the communal/family partnership group that you have enjoyed for years.
Perhaps you can add people to the group that bring what you didn’t know last time.

Welcome to Fluther.

Like @wundayatta, I can’t ‘exactly’ parse what it is you’re trying to say here. But I’ll make some assumptions and press on.

Sometimes small collections of people “sharing hardship” can get along very sociably with limited resources, sharing what they have and “spreading the [limited] wealth”. But when one or more of them starts to become more productive, and the others remain unproductive through choice (not disability), then the productive one can become resentful of those who refuse to participate to the same degree, and he will separate himself from the others.

Along the same lines, when the group as a whole starts to become more productive, they don’t usually become that way in exactly the same way. That is, they produce different things and they produce their wealth in different ways, too. Egos get in the way of some relationships, and not everyone wants to take the same orders, so dissension can arise in the group, and that can split it, too.