You can learn about the experience of partnership in business, its type of business partnership, disadvantages and advantages of each here and now. The highlighted models have pitfalls that are better to know in advance, but with the right approach will bring your joint venture growth and even a leap.
Early partnership or business from friends
I often call friendship business “early partnership” – because most often it is at a young age that we start our first company with friends. After all, when you are 18-20 years old, all your networking is friends or classmates.
The peculiarity of such types of partnership business is what I call “when there is nothing to lose”. This means that both partners do not have expertise or specific skills and knowledge, and are just starting to master the business.
The advantages of early partnership: when you have a friend who can share the risks with you, it is a huge plus. When starting your first business it is very important to have someone to consult with. Having a partner friend helps you gain confidence and move forward step by step.
Cons of early partnership: whether the partnership will last long or have to part ways depends on the personality types of partnership in business. If you complement each other, for example, one is an Administrator and the other is an Entrepreneur (according to the Adizes classification), then such a partnership can last quite a long time.
Mature partnership or business with an expert
Two important factors for a successful find business partnership:
- Trust. When you start cooperation (especially if it is a partnership), it is important for you to decide on the shore that you are ready to trust this person. Because if you do not have trust, you will always doubt and double-check other people’s decisions. This, in turn, will take a lot of energy and greatly slow down the development of the project. In business, you have to make a lot of decisions very quickly, and I am absolutely convinced that most of these decisions are wrong. But only in this way, due to a large amount of actions, quantity can grow into quality.
- Lack of competition between partners. The bottom line is that partners should looking for business partnership first of all at the qualities that allow them to strengthen each other and not compete. If you learn to play in one team, your partnership will be 10 times stronger. In general, this applies to all areas of our life – work, friendship, family relationships.
The business partnership advantages: you make the minimum number of mistakes and move towards the goal as quickly as possible. It seems to me that this model is optimal in markets that are either already formed or are growing rapidly.
Disadvantages of expert partnership: a high risk of competition between partners. If you have 2-3 people with extensive experience and a list of achievements, there is a high probability that the partners will start competing with each other. Despite the fact that everyone’s expertise is different – every leader with ambitions wants his opinion to be taken into account.
Spin-off partnerships
Probably, every outsourcing company dreams of making its own product. And as part of the implementation of such a dream, startups can be created within the company.
The essence of these projects is that you make some cool solution inside that allows you to optimize your business process or increase efficiency. And you think that this solution may be interesting for other companies. If the market is large enough and there are many such companies, then most often such projects turn into full-fledged startups – I call them spin-offs.
When launching a spin-off, it is important not just to put a team in place that will “saw” the project. All the same rules of the game apply here as when launching startups – you need a driver. Therefore, it is an important example of a partnership business:
- Appoint a dedicated CEO of the product, making him a partner (giving a share in the project in exchange for the invested money and time), so that the person is maximally motivated for the success of the product.
- Form a product team (who “saws” the product, and who is engaged in marketing and customer contacts).
- Formulate a product budget and deadlines for key events (MVP launch, first sales).
The drawback here, as in any startup: whether your idea will take off and whether you will be able to respond to the market demand. And, of course, whether you correctly identified the market demand at the start.
Here the simplest and most understandable indicator is money. If customers are willing to pay you in the early stages of project development, then you are on the right track. In general, I would recommend measuring everything in a startup with money – if there is money, there is business, if there is no money, there is no business.
Volunteer partnerships
There are a large number of volunteer projects that are in the minds of entrepreneurs or leaders, but are not implemented due to lack of time or unwillingness to master this path on their own. So by finding another enthusiast or leader who has similar ideas and can combine your energy, you get a great result. You will “fluff” each other and make each other take small steps towards the goal.
The key business partnership benefits of such a volunteer partnership is that you voice the lack of desire for material gain. And you set a goal to expand your circle of acquaintances and your influence – to get acquainted with a large number of young people and to improve yourself. After all, when you teach people, you have to put your knowledge on the shelves in your head. This way you get a good pumping for yourself.
The key disadvantage is that since volunteer projects do not generate income, but require the time of each participant, the energy and drive may not be enough to keep the project alive. As soon as the priority changes or motivation drops, it is difficult to force yourself to do it.Based on my personal experience, I still prefer a business partnership form with an expert – in my opinion, this is the wisest way to result. But to come to this understanding, you often need to go through all the models, and perhaps find something of your own.