Primal Skill - Dream. Design. Execute.

Managing a business – Solo vs partnership

 

Hi, i’m Daniel and i’m Managing Partner and Business Developer here at PrimalSkill.com.

This will be my first post but hopefully first of many to come.

For this first post i decided to talk a little about a topic that is important for startups, expanding organizations and our own life here at Primal Skill and that is whether to go about managing your business alone or with the aid of a partner.

Flying solo

Partnership sounds great and it is if you can manage it…problem is partnerships are just like marriages and we all know what happens with most couples.

Fact is around 70% of small businesses are sole proprietors. Why, you ask ? Easy, because having a close partner brings a lot of responsabilities,  social and personal issues into play, although if done right this comes with the “cost” of increasing your company’s potential, clientele, workload, income etc.

Control is the most important thing in the mind of an individual when deciding to start a business, this is even more accentuated if the respectable is coming from employment. Having a partner means giving up this control or at least the sense that you are. If you are the kind of guy who has always done things alone whit out consulting anybody, who always went his own way and never listened to others, even if that proved to be a bad route sometimes, than perhaps a partner is not for you.

Advantages and……of partnerships

I admit, i am biased here because i have great belief in partnerships, i believe that having the right partner can elevate any business to levels which are most of the time unreachable for a sole proprietor.

So let’s see what we get with a partner. We get :

a partner…don’t look at me strange please.  Entrepreneurship is often a long and lonely road stacked with countless problems, decisions, setbacks and having someone to share these with and who you know is working toward the same goals as you can be a huge comfort.

The most important advantage though is the working relationship, the synergy. Having a partner that you trust and who you can work together with in harmony can lead to results that could not have been achieved by either party individually.

How to choose a partner and partnerships that work

How to choose a partner? This right here is the question that will make or break a business based on a partnership. Associating yourself with somebody who complements you and your skills and with who you have good understanding is crucial.

In my experience and view there are only two kind of partnerships that work in the long term:

1. Silent partner – this is pretty straight forward, the silent partner only provides capital for the company but does not actively participate in it’s management, this way there is no opportunity for conflicts to arise.
2. Complementary partners – meaning that the partner has different skills, procedures and qualities to it’s counterpart. This can be a very successful model to follow because it means allowing both individuals to concentrate on what they do best so they can become even more proficient in those areas. The whole is far greater then the sum of it’s parts and in this case two individuals working on different areas can produce an overall much more increased output while two people with the same skill sets will eventually step on each others toes and slow down the workflow.

Consider the following and you should have no problems working in a partnership:

• communication – you are not alone anymore, remember this, discuss every expectation, goal and decision.
• define clear business roles
• never partner just because you can’t afford to hire
• be tolerant and work out any arising issues

Following in the footsteps of giants

It is only fitting to finish this post with taking  a look at a few little partnerships that worked and learning from them :

Sergey Brin and Larry Page – Co-Founders of Google

Amnon Amir, Sefi Vigiser, Arik Vardi, Yair Goldfinger, and Yossi Vardi – Founders of Mirabillis developer of ICQ instant messenger

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak – Co-founders of Apple

Bill Gates and Paul Allen – Co-founders of Microsoft

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen – Co-founders of YouTube

And everybody else who i did not have time nor patience to find pictures of, like : Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake (Co-founders, Flickr), Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström (Co-founders, Skype), Richard and Maurice McDonald (McDonalds), Bill Hewlett and David Packard (Hewlett – Packard , HP), Sam, Jack, Albert, and Harry Warner (Warner Bros.)

Let us take inspiration in these great businessmen and women.

If you enjoyed this article then help spread the word and please follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our RSS feed.

Subscribe to our RSS feedFollow us on Twitter