What Makes a Great Partnership Work?

Six sets of partners who've built successful businesses share their secrets.

Biz Stone, Evan Williams & Jason Goldman

Cofounders of The Obvious Corporation, a technology systems developer that helps foster new start-ups

 

HOW THEY PARTNERED:

The trio first worked together at Google in 2003 on the Blogger team; Williams and Stone left by 2005 to start their own ventures. Eventually, the three served as execs at Twitter, but they all stepped away from full-time duties (Goldman in December 2010, Williams in March and Stone in June) and began work on Obvious this summer.

DIVISION OF LABOR:

While Williams technically started Obvious (obvious.com) in 2005 (it’s described as “Twitter’s incubator”), the three are sharing the title of cofounder for its relaunch. And despite the trio remaining tight-lipped about the details, each is assuming roles similar to what they had at Twitter—Williams as the “on-the-go-CEO,” Stone as chief creative officer and Goldman as the product development lead. The three pool their talents to “build, partner and invest” in new start-ups, including Lift, an app designed to increase human accomplishment through positive reinforcement.

WHAT THEY’VE LEARNED:

“Assume your coworkers are smart and they have good intentions,” Stone said recently. “If you’re in a relationship, and you’re not getting a ton out of it, your relationship is probably doomed. It’s the same thing in business.”

 

Ken Austin & Jenna Fagnan

Founder and president, Tequila Avión

 

HOW THEY PARTNERED:

A mutual friend introduced the pair over three years ago, when Austin was beginning work on Tequila Avión (tequ ila avion.com) after cofounding Marquis Jet. “I knew she was a very rare find,” Austin says of Fagnan. After months of keeping in touch, Austin convinced Fagnan to leave her job as VP of sales for Tag Heuer and join him at Tequila Avión by having her taste the tequila. “It’s very hard to find the right partners in business,” says Austin, “but our desire to achieve certain things matches very well.”

They’ve achieved plenty with Avión in the past 18 months, including receiving high-profile coverage on the HBO show Entourage, partnering with global spirits distributor Pernod Ricard and winning gold medals at the 2011 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

DIVISION OF LABOR:

“She tries to make me calmer and I try to make her crazier,” Austin jokes. In practical terms, Austin envisions the big ideas and Fagnan executes them. “But we share in the thought process and figure out what we need to get done and where we are going,” Fagnan says. Austin adds, “We really aren’t dividing power or responsibility. We are dividing thought.”

WHAT THEY’VE LEARNED:

“It’s really important to have someone to bounce things off of,” Fagnan says. “If you don’t have someone you can have a strong conversation with, you are going to have a lot more mistakes along the way. Not to say we haven’t made mistakes, but we’ve made a lot less because of each other.”

 

David Neville & Marcus Wainwright

Cofounders of rag & bone, a fashion design firm

 

HOW THEY PARTNERED:

Neville and Wainwright met as teens at Wellington College, a boarding school in southeast England. They reunited nearly two decades later when “Marcus followed a girl”—now his wife, Glenna—“to New York and decided to start a clothing company,” Neville says. “I’d always been interested in clothing and style, so when he asked if I’d join him running this business, I said yes.”

Lacking fashion training, the two tracked down a Kentucky factory known for its blue jeans—“our first breakthrough moment,” Wainwright says—and produced a line of men’s jeans, sold in three stores in 2004. Now, rag & bone (rag-bone.com) has menswear and womenswear lines, seven stores of their own (five in New York, one in D.C., one in Tokyo) and won the 2010 CFDA Award for Menswear Designer of the Year.

DIVISION OF LABOR:

“Marcus takes care of the design and I do more of the commerce, but we work together on the overall direction of the brand,” Neville says. Adds Wainwright, “We concentrate on different things but share the same vision for where we want to take the brand. It would be more challenging if we were doing the same thing all the time—there would be more conflict.”

WHAT THEY’VE LEARNED:

Change, but remember your roots. “We are evolving all the time, but we have to stay true to rag & bone’s initial values,” Neville says. “Everything we make has to have a sense of integrity to it.” Adds Wainwright, “You have to be open-minded in some ways, but stubborn in others.”

 

Jessica Jackley And Dana Mauriello

 

Cofounders of ProFounder, a crowd-funding site that supports small-business entrepreneurs

HOW THEY PARTNERED:

After meeting in the bathroom of Stanford’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies in the summer of 2009, Jackley and Mauriello shared many “great conversations about our common interests, mainly empowering entrepreneurs,” Jackley says. Those discussions spurred the idea for ProFounder (profounder.com), which they launched officially in December 2010. “We didn’t come together on this because we were friends, we were analytical about it—do we share common values, missions, goals? And then the friendship built from there,” says Mauriello.

DIVISION OF LABOR:

Mauriello focuses on product development and community outreach while Jackley handles external relations and marketing. But “it’s very fluid and changes from day to day,” Mauriello says. Adds Jackley, “We trade off the lead role as needed and as desired.”

WHAT THEY’VE LEARNED:

“We disagree a lot; but we are really good disagree-ers,” Jackley says. “Having someone who doesn’t completely think like you all the time turned out to be really valuable. It’s crucial to actually seeing the problem and finding more robust solutions.”

Both disregard the idea that your partner has to be everything you’re not. “The most important thing is to make sure that you have common values and goals,” Mauriello says. “Everything else you can learn,” Jackley adds.

 

Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, Tom Gruber & Norman Winarsky

Cofounders of Siri Inc., the company that invented the iPhone 4S virtual personal assistant

HOW THEY PARTNERED:

When SRI International, a research institute in Menlo Park, Calif., brought together 300 experts in 2003 to work on the DARPA-funded CALO project (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes), the four techies found themselves leading the artificial intelligence endeavor. In 2007 they branched off with Siri Inc., a company intended to bring the virtual assistant to consumers.

DIVISION OF LABOR:

After the formation of Siri (siri.com), Kittlaus assumed the role of CEO, Cheyer became head of engineering, Gruber headed design and Winarsky searched for funding and served as the link to SRI International. When Apple purchased Siri in April 2010 for a reported $200 million, everyone but Winarsky moved over. Kittlaus left Apple shortly after the launch of the iPhone 4S, but Cheyer and Gruber are still on board (Cheyer as director of engineering for the iPhone group and Gruber as the product design lead for the iPhone).

WHAT THEY’VE LEARNED:

Success does not only depend on the people you choose to work with—but also the companies. After the sale of Siri to Apple, Winarsky stated that it was “a great event for us in terms of our impact on the world.”

 

James & Alexa Hirschfeld

Cofounders of Paperless Post, which offers online invitations evocative of paper stationery

HOW THEY PARTNERED:

James came up with the idea in 2007 when the then Harvard undergrad was planning his 21st birthday party. “There wasn’t anything [online] that expressed who I was,” he says. “I wanted the custom stationery experience in a more efficient platform.” Immediately, James, 25, thought of his sister Alexa, 27, then a recent Harvard grad working for CBS News with Katie Couric. “We’re very close, we admire each other’s intelligence and we’d always imagined working together,” he says.

DIVISION OF LABOR:

In the beginning, James designed the format and Alexa created the user interface. James is now CEO and Alexa is chief product officer of the New York-based company, which officially launched in 2009. Paperless Post (paper lesspost.com) has sent out more than 45 million invitations and has received $6.3 million in three rounds of private equity financing.

WHAT THEY’VE LEARNED:

In partnerships, “the most important thing is trust, because you can’t make every decision on your own,” Alexa says. Diversity of thinking and talent is important too, she notes. “Ideally you’re as different as possible while still trusting each other. That’s what protects you.”

Curator