Every day I get emails from people working on new startups.  I'm continually amazed at how many of them come from their existing corporate email address. 

There are lots of quick reasons I can think of why this is a bad idea.

• Your company owns your email.  Theoretically, everything you write in email is owned by your company.
• Your boss reads your email.  Especially if you suddenly quit to start a new company.
• You use Microsoft Office and don't know how to turn off auto-complete.  C'mon - you've accidentally sent an email to someone you didn't mean to because of auto-complete.
• It's weird for me to get an email from joe@bigco saying "starting a new company" - it makes me think that you aren't that serious.

I could come up with lots more.  It's so simple to get a free gmail (or yahoo, or hotmail) email account.  Be bold - take the plunge.

Posted in: Entrepreneurship