This probably means a lot less if you live in a developed country. Malaysia probably has some of the most expensive cars in the world. They're like student loans in the US. People here get very emotional about them because they're "necessary". You can live without a car, but it limits your opportunities by a lot. A car often takes 9 years to pay off, the prices are artificially high thanks to bad government policies, and it'll roughly cost 1/3 the price of a house for that period of time if you're frugal.
An RX-8 back when I knew the guy would cost about 25% of a good tech salary (senior big tech, or tech lead/CxO on a smaller one), on a 9 year loan. It's not a family car. And it's the cheaper of the three.
I bought my first car at 32, with a manager job, and that was with quite a lot of arguments with my wife. It's a cheapish MPV.
I have some emotional anchors to those cars. Partly because I ride with them going to a client's office. Partly because it's the last thing I see from them.
As for partnering with them, there's a longer story and every story is different, but it's not car related. Most had proven themselves to some extent. In some cases they had already had the deal on the table, and just needed a prototype. And somehow I went from prototype guy to only person who cared. It's why I couldn't close some of those deals myself.
I learned a LOT from this reply. Thanks for your patience in writing it out; it seems to mirror what I witnessed elsewhere e.g Australia, and it's starkly different from our situation in the US.
Given the context, I can't blame you for assigning significance to a car.
What indicators are you looking for to avoid making the partnerships you described?
We actually would buy cars in Australia as students and ship it to Malaysia. Even with the weaker currency and shipping costs, it was a good deal. That's how bad it is in Malaysia. The long story was that Malaysia invested a lot in car manufacturing to become a high tech industrial country, which failed, so the gov taxed foreign cars and stunted public transport.
I think the best model is personality + incentive. It's probably worth a couple chapters to discuss. But basically incentive is the time domain - can you continually incentivize them on such a slope to act in your interest?
Personality is what kind of incentive they expect. Some people would lose their jobs for an affair. Some just want to appear successful. I know a guy whose life was changed by meditation, so he gave up his whole career and traveled the world helping people with stress. Everyone is a mix of things and place different weights on different things.
So you want to model people and see that they align with whatever your specific venture is. Someone suited to one venture may not be suited for another. And there's a time component too, so someone great 5 years ago may be unsuitable now.
Original post reads as you have grudge because they were lazy.
Sorry to say but this explanation got me thinking.
Maybe those people actually had real insight that these ventures were not good investments. So I would not be so demeaning because they stopped being interested when it turned out there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of money to be spent. That it was good business idea for you - as you mention your time seemed to be worth less - it was not a good idea for them.
From reading both comments it seemed that you could benefit greatly from those deals and for them putting focus/money elsewhere was more beneficial.
As you wrote that comment and seem to have grudge against them, they took easy way out by not confronting you directly on that.
I still might be wrong but maybe they were gracious enough to leave you alone and not shatter your dreams.
I have seen in developed countries if you are sales person with a shiny car like BMW they will not deal with you and better strategy is to get high end VW to have nice stuff inside but from outside to seem like a decent person not a flashy sales scammer.
An RX-8 back when I knew the guy would cost about 25% of a good tech salary (senior big tech, or tech lead/CxO on a smaller one), on a 9 year loan. It's not a family car. And it's the cheaper of the three.
I bought my first car at 32, with a manager job, and that was with quite a lot of arguments with my wife. It's a cheapish MPV.
I have some emotional anchors to those cars. Partly because I ride with them going to a client's office. Partly because it's the last thing I see from them.
As for partnering with them, there's a longer story and every story is different, but it's not car related. Most had proven themselves to some extent. In some cases they had already had the deal on the table, and just needed a prototype. And somehow I went from prototype guy to only person who cared. It's why I couldn't close some of those deals myself.