If you can get this right, then long term success in my mind is much more assured. Why? For me, the answer is that someone else can share the burden of the failures, and you can help each other when one may stop or fail. It is easy to keep going and be positive when things are going well, but when things are going badly you need all the support you can get. Stopping when things fail or go wrong is the easiest thing to do, so a team, in my mind works well.

Having said that, there are times when ones conviction of the right steps to take may become diluted or changed by a partner. This means that communication and dialog between you is essential if you are to benefit from having a partner, so that you can keep discussing the best action to take until the logic and benefits are clear.

Some key points for me are:

1. You need someone who shares your passion and belief in the product or service you want to provide.

2. You need someone that can talk honestly and openly to you, and that you can talk openly to them. Many times you can stop going down a blind alley, by listening to someone who has a different point of view.

3. Ideally you want to have complimentary skills and personalities. For example, I see glasses as half empty, and my business partner sees them as half full. I am very cautious and look at all the things that can go wrong. He looks at the positives. If it was my company alone,  then I would not finish anything, as it would never be quite perfect. If he ran the company alone, I think products would be released too early, without an adequate number of teething problems fixed. Instead, we have arguments, discussions and late nights, finalizing products and putting in the last ounce of extra energy, to make sure we get products out and in as good a release state as is viable. So, you do not always want to agree or always have the same ideas. If that were the case, then there would be much less need for both of you to be in the company – one would do.

4. Ideally, and I have not had this, you want a third person with business and money experience. In a book I read about Walt Disney, and his early years of unsure growth, his brother was the money man, and Walt was the ideas man. Walt did not have to learn all the ways of the money world, and his brother was able to secure the finances needed to grow the company at each stage. This has been my biggest problem – finding a money man you can trust! I do not have a money man brother – if you do, use their skills to good advantage!