Choosing a Business Partner

Choosing a business partner is a pretty important thing, especially if you have ambitions of being successful in your business endeavours.  With that said the reality is you don’t really get to choose, or at least you don’t get to choose from a group of people, Instead, you come across people from time to time and decide (sometimes on a whim) to start a business together.

People like me

Given the organic nature of meeting people and deciding to start a business with them its often the case the other person is very similar to yourself, or at least has the same interests, after all, how did you meet in the first place?

Its quite likely that you will meet people just like you and will want to work with them for that exact reason, but after doing this about 406 times in the last twelve years (ok i exaggerate, but it feels like that), I’m here to tell you that starting a business with someone “just like you” is the first step to failure and I will tell you why i think this…

We like the same “Things”

Starting a business ultimately starts with an idea, you decide you want to build something amazing and share it with the world, its really easy to come up with ideas that you and your new business partner will agree on if your very alike, perhaps your in the same profession too (Software Developers for instance), people like this will often agree more than they don’t and as such, will often come to the same conclusions about business ideas.

Similar people will often find the same challenges difficult to overcome, and will often decide to quit at similar times.

People just like you will lack the same skills that you do, sales skills for instance are often lacking in great software developers, I have seen many small software houses that churn out incredible software yet lack the skills to go out and sell it.

We went to school together

Many famous startups grew from college dorm rooms or campus libraries, take Apple or Facebook to name just two. But of course these are the exceptions not the rule, thousands of high school buddies every week start out on a voyage to be the next twitter, but fail almost instantly. The reason is age, if your the same age as your business partner your missing out on so much.

Older people will have more life experience and general common sense (usually), younger people will have greater enthusiasm. If your not at least generation older or younger than your business partner your likely to have very similar experiences from the university of life and as such will make similar mistakes along the way. If your both old farts it likeley that you will have an abundance of experiences but will lack the motivation and mental fitness to put the long hard hours in to your new venture.

Not too Different!

So by now you have gathered that I think similar people are not going to make great business partners, or at they are not going to build great businesses. With that said, I also think you need to find someone who has at least one shared interest or skill. Think of each founding parter in your business as circle in a simple Venn Diagram:

When you think about your individual experiences, skills, interests you should ideally be able to construct a simple diagram like the one above.

For example, a Software developer and a Tech Savvy Marketeer would have a skill set that combines well, While each has distinct skills there would be a natural overlap. Somebody who’s 25 and somebody else who’s 35 would also fit this model, the relative life experiences would be different enough to benefit from each others perspective without it feeling like your working with your dad!.

If you can’t see a natural overlap in interests, skills or life experiences then your also probably not a good fit.

The blueprint for success

Well there isn’t one… all we can do is keep learning and sharing, but i absolutely think that my own experiences tell me that partnering with someone slightly older or younger than yourself, who has a good amount of skills that are different from your own and has a different perspective on the world will almost certainly help you get further along that long hard road to business success.