A Case for the Go-it-Alone Entrepreneur
Ben and Jerry. Goldman and Sachs. Page and Brin. Ogilvy and Mather. And those guys working in a garage at the end of your street.
History provides plenty of examples of wildly successful entrepreneur-partners. And each example provides a case for the collaborative effort. Perhaps that’s why so many of us consider the process of finding a partner a mission-critical component in the creation of new ventures.
Remember the “How to build a bulletproof startup” article from the May 2006 issue of Business 2.0? Writers Michael Copeland and Om Malik itemized a 16-step route to startup success, and “Build your founding team” landed at step 2. “The ideal founding team is a triumvirate,” they wrote, “that includes an ace technologist, a big strategic thinker, and a dealmaker who focuses on sales and marketing.”
To be sure, partners can introduce plenty of benefits to a project: Fresh ideas and new perspectives. Specialized industry knowledge. Uncommon skills. Useful contacts. Increased productivity. And they can give new ventures tons of credibility, because the ability to find someone who will not only stand by your ideas, but who will also “put her money where her mouths is” by investing time into their development speaks volumes to outsiders about the venture’s potential viability.
But those benefits make partnering remarkably seductive. So much so, in fact, that we often abuse it.
I mean that we entrepreneurs abandon our costs-versus-benefits instincts in the face of promising partnership arrangements. The outcome? A series of mismatches between founders’ personal and financial goals. Between their work ethics. Between their personal interests and inter-personal expectations. And between their levels of dedication to the new venture.
Consider the words of Seth Godin, who writes in The Bootstrapper’s Bible, “It’s almost impossible to find a situation in which two people contribute equal amounts, have equal needs, have mutually consistent expectations, and will stay in the business the same amount of time.”
The lesson: Be open to partnering, but never to the exclusion of moving forward independently. Because while collaborating with other talented entrepreneurs can pay off handsomely, it can also impose unnecessary burdens on a new venture during its most critical development stages.
Review the benefits of partnering in light of its potential costs.
And don’t be afraid to go it alone.
Brian Lash is founder of TheTippingBlog.com and writes about the entrepreneurial experience at BrianLash.com.
2 Comments
David Askaripour
February 26th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Awesome article. I agree, it’s very important to get that strong team going. But as you stated, it’s not a must for all entrepreneurs and it can lead to the demise of a venture — seen it happen so many times. Building a team is something that entrepreneurs can’t afford to breeze through — takes times and planning.
The Entrepreneurial MBA? at DJR
March 9th, 2007 at 8:09 am
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