Working With A Partner Can Be Difficult...And Rewarding

Let me tell you some bad news, and it’s something you probably already know: working with a partner can be complicated. Christopher Law is a Ph.D. candidate at Kenan-Flagler, researching the impact of the cofounder dynamic on the company’s culture. His research is far from complete, but Law and I recently spoke about what he’s learning from his conversations. As it turns out, the cofounder relationship is frequently boom or bust. He recounted a story of one founder from a VC-funded startup in Seattle, who shared the deeply painful experience of needing to convince the board of directors that his ‘souring cofounder relationship [was] the main existential threat to the business.’ He told Law after a year of struggling, “My biggest regret was not kicking him out earlier.”

I’m sure you hate reading that as much as I hated sharing it. The costs in situations like this include the cofounders’ relationship and the impact on the employees who witnessed the dysfunction in action and lost potential for the company. Recent data seems to indicate that a team approach to building a business may improve your chances of success and help get you there faster. The 2021 Trends in Entrepreneurship Report recently found that 80% of so-called Unicorns (privately-owned technology startups worth more than $1 billion) have more than one founder. Those single-founder companies who make it tend to be slower to reach Unicorn status and have fewer investors. 

The data from the Trends in Entrepreneurship Report and Law’s early findings certainly support what I’ve seen in my 20+ years working with senior leaders. The most successful people surround themselves with intelligent, trustworthy people and build systems that account for, rather than ignore, the human factors that can slow and even derail the company’s success. Earlier this month, I wrote about one process to help teams build those systems. In a nutshell, it’s a matter of getting clarity about what each partner brings to the table, and what’s most important to you all as individuals and the team’s success as a whole. From there, you can establish agreements about how to work well together and build systems that support them.

Here’s the bottom line—the cautionary tale from the Seattle-based founder doesn’t have to happen. Law also recounts what a Raleigh-based cofounder told him: “I certainly could not do this job without my partner. I don’t know how people do that. I’m impressed, amazed, and sometimes just stupefied how people can do this job with it all riding on their shoulders without having an equal, a peer, to support you.”