Written by Kerry VerMeulen

Once upon a time, two couples vacationed together and sang just for fun and to entertain other tourists on the beach. They had so much fun singing together they decided to partner up and form a band. In 2023, this band, also called ABBA, joined the elite few whose songs have surpassed one billion streams.

Famous partnerships like this are scattered throughout history; synergistic collaborations that result in an indescribable bit of “Dancing Queen” enchantment. The “two Steves”, Wosniak and Jobs, stumbled upon a business when the latter recognised the marketability of his buddy’s homemade micro processing computers. By leveraging one parent’s garage and each other’s talents, they accelerated personal computing and brought Apple to life.

Comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler met in Chicago in 1993, and instantly recognised the harmony of their disparate personalities and instincts [source]. Amy’s bubbliness was the perfect foil to Tina’s razor-sharp wit, and the comedic icons have now collaborated together for over thirty years, with hilarious results.

The Cambridge dictionary definition of a partner is simply ‘a person or organisation you are closely involved with in some way,’ and these relationships form in manifold circumstances: friendships, mentorships, romantic encounters. What this definition doesn’t say is that the best collaborations give the world something new—a mixture of talents, styles, and visions that the separate entities could not achieve individually. The difference the right partner can make is as striking as the difference between the gases hydrogen and oxygen, versus their combined energies as water. In partnership, these otherwise invisible gases radically transform into the briny liquid dense enough to support floating icebergs or breaching whales.

The Cambridge duo of Kamiar Mohaddes and Thomas Roulet brought their skill sets together to create the successful King’s Entrepreneurship Lab. Kamiar, Associate Professor in Economics & Policy at the Cambridge Judge Business School, believes that partners can open our eyes to alternative solutions. For him, we should not be reluctant to collaborate, especially when views differ. Thomas, Professor of Organisational Sociology and Leadership at the Cambridge Judge Business School, stresses the importance of trust. For him, enduring collaborations that start with a friendship can remain so, despite conflict, so long as trust is in place to move past disagreements. Thomas also reminds us that “We can never be good at everything, so it is good to surround yourself with people of different skills,…perspectives or attitudes to approaching issues.”

Partnership advisor and expert, Bill Mohri (M Consulting), compares the work required to form a successful partnership to an iceberg: ninety percent of its mass is hidden in the depths [source]. What shimmers above the surface, in press releases and LinkedIn posts, is just a glimpse of this formidable foundation. Bill strongly urges new founders, especially those just starting out, not to underestimate the time it takes to find the right partnership and proceed through the deal negotiations and contracting stages: “If you’re like most people, you completely underestimate the complexity…of executing the partnership you spent so long pulling together.”

When I started my business, Plumstone, Inc., I recognised that it would be enormously helpful to bring in someone with prior experience, so I turned to an entrepreneur friend, Cynthia VanRenterghem. We established early on that, although we did trust one another, we would never rely on our friendship to do what legal agreements could do more effectively. Our operating agreement detailed the time and financial resources we could realistically allocate and who would take the lead in specific areas. We made sure our goal for the business was defined and aligned. Friendship and trust are important but should not be mutually exclusive with clear divisions of labour and frank conversations.

The importance of drilling down on a mission has been demonstrated recently, to spectacular effect, by the OpenAI meltdown. The partnership between Sam Altman and Elon Musk “turned toxic” over claims that Sam abandoned Open AI’s mission of benefitting humanity to instead pursue profit [source]. The disastrous unraveling of their partnership also underscores the need to talk about money early, and often. Don’t pretend it is unimportant, and don’t imagine that monetary success will alleviate financial friction. If anything, success is likely to steer partners towards the impulse to cling.

Gabriel Brown, CEO & Co-founder of Cambridge startup CAUSE, and former E-Lab cohort member, says that when moments of decision revealed discord, or co-founders became divided by too much focus on insignificant details, a reminder of their mission and a return to the first principles of their business could inspire them back to action and continued engagement: “Everyone wants to be in a partnership that has a mutual benefit.”

Sometimes, forming a partnership is just another way of asking for help. This can be a difficult task for strong-minded, intrepid, independent people who excel at many things—in other words, the exact type of people who start businesses. When Gabriel first started CAUSE, he attempted to learn coding by himself instead of reaching out to others for help. His business quickly gained momentum after he found software and technical developers with whom he could partner, instead of going it alone. Counterintuitively, studies show that asking for help actually increases perceptions of competence. In fact, Steve Jobs believed so strongly in asking for help that he listed this quality as a main predictor of success in business; other people’s help can turn “dreaming into doing” [source].

So, while partnerships can result in something akin to magic, it won’t be pixie dust, or miraculous comings together (aside of course from hydrogen and oxygen, and perhaps ABBA) that create it. Stock up on openness, layer in frank discussions of difficult details, and ask what your friends can bring to the mix.

After all, as A.A. Milne’s (Trinity College, Cambridge, 1903) much loved character Winnie-the-Pooh believes—“It’s so much more friendly with two.”

The Ingredients for a Magical Partnership (Hint: It’s not pixie dust)

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