What happens when a successful startup goes wrong and the original founders are dispensed with for no apparent fault of their own?

This is the entrepreneur’s ultimate nightmare — to lose control of your creation in the expansion process then find yourself dumped by incomers.

And that’s the cautionary tale of JPG Magazine, an online and print business that morphed into 80/20 publishing and subsequent disaster for its founders.

The story is told at some length by Derek Powazek (pictured), who describes himself as a thinker, designer, and writer in San Francisco.

His conclusions from the experience are :

If it’s any help to other entrepreneurs, here’s what I’ve learned.

1. Make no assumptions when it comes to roles and responsibilities. Like my dad says: “Someone’s gotta call quittin’ time.”
2. Communication between partners is mandatory. And you cannot communicate with someone who is not communicating with you.
3. Decisions aren’t decisions if you have to keep making them. Set on the course and stick to it. If you keep talking about things that have already been decided, nothing will ever get done.
4. When someone says one thing, but acts in a contradictory way, you have a choice between believing their words or believing their deeds. Believe their deeds.
5. Never let anyone tell you what you want. When someone says, “You don’t want that,” what they really mean is, “I don’t want you to have that.”
6. Don’t stay where you’re not wanted, respected, or happy. Even if it’s your company.

Read the full story here.

So what’s it like to start an open-source project at the age of 19? More to the point, how would it feel if, four years later, your software powered millions of professional websites worldwide, including Reuters and The New York Times.

Matt Mullenweg (pictured at an even earlier age) of WordPress fame is the man to answer those questions, for it was he who did all that at such a tender age. The WordPress weblog platform is used by Syntagma Digital on its 50 sites and powers Small Business Booster, so we are interested in what Matt has to say.

Today, he outlines the process on his own blog, Photo Matt, and gives us a lot of insights into the business of starting up, especially in the field of open-source software, which doesn’t necessarily mean nonprofit.

Yes, WordPress really is four years old. I was 19. No, I didn’t create it alone, if I did you would have never heard of it. Actually, it entered a rather crowded field, not even close to being first. No, not planning to sell it, there isn’t really anything to sell, it’s more of a movement. No, I didn’t make 60 million dollars in 18 months.

Read the rest here.

Jeremy Wright, CEO of b5media — a 200-site “blog” network based in Toronto — has written a rodeo-style piece for the Chitika blog on how to make money from a startup small business.

Titled: Blog to Blog, Inc. -Turning a Cup of Coffee a Day into Millions -By Jeremy Wright, the post outlines Jeremy’s take on the whole b5media experience.

His 4-point business plan is :

1. Make our bloggers famous – every chance we got we wanted to promote our bloggers

2. Value community – we honestly felt (and now know) that a strong internal community can make anything happen

3. Focus on great writers and keeping them happy – do this and the rest (traffic, revenue, etc) will happen

4. Build an industry – we’ve believed from day 1 that working with other networks, other owners and building real partnerships and sharing resources was the only way to turn the hodgepodge of networks into a real industry.

As a fellow network owner, who occasionally gets into intense arguments with the man, I’m not going to comment on his article — or dispute his numbers (common in the network business).

But I recommend anyone considering a small business startup to read it for the experience it contains and just a suggestion of all the hard grind you have stretching out before you.