Finding a Business Partner

If you have one (or had) how did you meet and go about becoming partners?

As a single person you may lack ideas, or some of the specialized skills needed to successfully market, so the idea of a partner could be attractive. I think the key is finding a person that compliments your skills that you can work well with.

 

I've been lucky enough to find 2 good business partners. They were both freinds that just happened to have an interest that complimented sites I had in developement. Neither are that interested in the web side of stuff but both enjoy writing content.

 

If you find a person expert in their field say design, sales and marketing etc that can be much helpful to you in your business.

 

I had a buisness partner. He was a friend of mine, and we decieded to start on a company. You can go on the forums and look for one too. Maybe post a thread.

 

The most important thing is that you two *share* the same business goals. If one person wants to build a huge company and the other person just wants to make enough money to live off of. You probably will not get along.

My current partners are my brother and my girlfriend/life partner. Other than those two people I only partner with people on individual projects and not the whole business. This is because so many partnerships end in turmoil.

 

Hi, this is an interesting post. I am remaking one of my main websites and i am incorporating a "find business partner" section . I just thought the timing of your post was intriguing

 

Just an observation. I am really glad there are other peons out there as well. "Everyone was a peon at some point in time"... I although look forward to becoming a "grunt"

 

i suck as a business partner... i guess cause i am just obsessive and expect my partner to be also.

 

I am along the lines of shoemoney.. No business partnership I have had has ever lasted, because it really requires a level of understanding, cooperation and equal drive to make it work.

My most volatile partnership ended because we simply didn't share the same level of drive and effort towards the business. And it drove me nuts.

 

Some day you can be a Tauren

 

Yo-Yo, try this link. It may help you find some candidates!

 

I believe finding a good partner can motivate you and teach you alot about stuff you don't already know. Though make sure you only partner with someone willing to give you a fairshare for the amount of work they do. I have a local buddy who thinks he owns half of a website worth over 1k, all he did was sumbit it to 15 directories. Lucky I was smart enough to have everything in my name. If not Id be SOL (shit out of luck). When I have spare time again (this season is busy for me) I hope to find a partner for a project or two to help me learn a few ins and outs and motivate me to be MORE then successful.

 

No matter who you partner with though, whether it's a friend, relative or stranger, make sure you take the time to set up a proper agreement that clearly details both the operation and dissolution of the partnership.

 

On other look some time a business partner is a recipe for disaster, too much time is spent to solve on partnership problems and structure it, it diverts the focus from your business and eventually perhaps you have to take some hard decision to dissolve it which can be too expensive and emotionally painful.

 

Having a business partner is decisive i believe if you want multiple streams of income without having to work overtime. At least it is for me. I really had to resort to a partner after my ebusinesses started growing.

But it's not for everyone and you'd be very lucky to find a real partner or partners who share the same "business drive" as someone just commented. It also depends on what you understand by a 'business partner". This can be your husband, wife or relative as well, not necessarily a stranger.

 

The first business partner is your own family... who willingly allow you to spend those exrta hours clickety click on your laptop even during prime family time...
The second business partner is your employee - freelancer - folks who do your outsourced stuff...

Apart from these i try to become a customer of the good companies who treat their customers fairly... to provide me the missing pieces of expertise...

Getting into one to one partnership is a tricky business and it typically ends in a win-lose or lose-lose very few succeed. It hinges on the fact that you signed up for the partnership because you dont know intricacies in that oart of the business and the same for the other person. Hence you either over estimate or under estimate the work done by your partner.

If you under estimate your partner would leave you sooner or later when they find a better deal... when you overestimate and your partner enjoys this rather than get it on track... you will feel cheated when you find a better deal...

I have tried for many partnerships but for many reasons you want the clause saying that any one of you can break and go off at any time... this is excercised more often in reality when you run into partnership with folks you have not dealt with before.

The best way that has worked for me is a customer relationship on both sides... we figure out a good money value for the service rendered by each and this gives a say on the profit/loss split...

Just my thoughts ...good thread started BTW.

 

I think, whenever it comes to partnership, most of us seek a partner who can sell their services. So, in a sense, we are not seeking partners who can share our work-burdon. Rather we are seeking alliance with marketing persons who can do marketing, selling for us and that too on no-salary-basis.

Why no salarey basis? Simple because as soon as v honour them that u r not our sales person but our respected partner, from that very point the salery parameter is finished and % commission of sales generated by their efforts creep in.

 

In some of the partnerships I've done, I've made sure in writing I have 51% of everything, meaning if there is a decision we don't agree upon I'm the decision maker.

 

What is everybody's opinion on having a partnership between websites serve the same group of readers? Thanks.

 

In response to debare's comments, I would second that--and also ask if anyone has some examples of how they've gone about setting up partnerships.

I actually work in the legal field (well, marketing the legal field), and would prefer for the moment to not involve any lawyers to set up an agreement (since the revenue we're currently talking probably wouldn't cover the attorney fees).

I also realize it may be a bit different by location, but just thought I'd see if there was any good generic insight...

Toonces51