When we started Zyxware we had no clue as to how to start a company, how to and what to document, how to do our accounting and stuff. We had to undergo a process of trial and error to figure out what are the things we were supposed to do as a company. We don't want another entrepreneur to waste his/her time in doing what we have done. With this view we have created our Open Documentation Policy.
We are not claiming that all our processes and documentation are mature, no not yet. However we have come a long way. We don't think that new entrepreneurs should waste their precious time and effort in figuring out how to set up their company, internal processes and documentation. They should rather invest their time and effort in figuring out how to get their business up and running.
We definitely believe that there is no point in people trying to recreate pages and pages of company documentation just for the sake of building documentation. Creating documentation is usually an unavoidable requirement in setting up a company. It is not just that there is no point but it is a mammoth waste of time and effort when you are creating your documentation on your own. Yes, there could be benefits in having variations in the system but not if your primary objective is to build a company and not to build its company documentation.
We will be making available all our non-confidential company documents available for use by new entrepreneurs like us under the GNU Free Documentation License. Our suggestion to new entrepreneurs is to use our documents as templates and make necessary changes to suit your requirements. There is one distinct advantage in this, that you will go through the documents at least once ensuring that you would have a clear picture of what your documentation says. Over the next few weeks we should have most of our documentation up on our company website.