Where to find a business partner

By David Alison

There are lots of reasons people want to work with a partner when starting or growing a business. In many cases a partnership happens out of a shared passion; two or more people discuss an insanely great idea and before you know it they are sketching out a product or business plan on a cocktail napkin. Then there are those that have an idea but recognize they need someone that has skills they lack or maybe want to share the crushing workload that comes with starting a business.

Finding one or more business partners can be an interesting challenge. Not only do you have to make sure you’re picking the right partner, you need to have some candidates to draw from in the first place. But where do you look?

Friends and Colleagues
The most common place to find a business partner is within your current circle of friends and colleagues. If you’re a university student it may be someone you have classes with or have teamed up with on a project. Maybe you’ve been out in the workforce for a while and you’ve got a lunch group you’ve been talking to about an idea. It could even be a relative that you know is interested and has experience in the business you want to start.

Going inside of your close circle is very common and often can lead to great partnerships. You know the person pretty well and likely have seen that they have an expertise that can help your business. Provided you don’t add a partner from this circle purely because you like them and “it would be cool to work together”, this is the best place to start a search.

• Hewlett Packard: Bill Hewlett and David Packard attended Stanford together and became friends during a 2 week camping trip.
• Apple: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak met when Jobs had a summer job at a company where Wozniak was working.
• Microsoft: Bill Gates and Paul Allen met while they attended Lakeside School as young teenagers before heading off to college.
• Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University while working on a research project.

In addition to these there are the family connections. McDonalds was originally the result of brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald building a series of restaurants together. Warner Brothers Studios was formed by 4 brothers laboring through the early film industry. The first airplane was the result of brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright toiling away together.

So what do you do if you don’t have a sibling or friend with the skills needed to help you build your business?

Leverage the Social Web
With the incredible popularity of the social web, getting together with people has never been easier. Facebook is good because so many people now have Facebook accounts; chances are an old friend or colleague you may want to chat with about a business idea has an account. LinkedIn is even better because it’s designed around the concept of business networking and introducing yourself to others through each person’s network. You can update your profile to reflect what you are looking for in your business relationships. 

Whereas a complete stranger trying to friend you on Facebook has a bit of a creep factor to it, that stigma doesn’t apply on LinkedIn. Reaching out to strangers is expected there. If you do reach out to a stranger on LinkedIn, explain why (a shared interest in SEO for example). Don’t send the standard “You look like someone I should be networking with...” request - those look spammy and are often ignored.

Twitter can also be a valuable tool in networking. Pick a topical area you want to focus on for your business and do some searches on Twitter to see who is talking about that. When you see tweets that look interesting, check out the profile of the person writing it and follow them. As you see those conversations evolve in your Twitter stream, you’ll start to see that there are others you may also want to follow. Engage people on Twitter and before you know it you’ll start spawning off private conversations and getting to know the right people.

Topical blogs are also a great way of finding people that are interested in the areas you are. If for example you are looking for an engineering partner to help with a green technology business, search for blogs that cover green technology and start following both the posts and also the conversations. Many targeted blogs have a micro-community that form around them.

Always Be Networking
Meet Ups are a great way to get together with others interested in the same space as you. Very often you will get a chance to meet fellow—or aspiring—entrepreneurs that are looking to start or grow their business. Jump over to Meetup.com and see if there are networking events in your area. If not, consider starting one.

A few guidelines when attending a meetup: don’t immediately throw out “I’m looking for a partner for my new business”. That’s like a single person walking into a bar and starting off a conversation with “I’m looking for a spouse.” Learn what others are doing and share where you are with your idea. Be honest on the stage your company is in—especially it's just an idea at that point. If you have expertise in a particular area, offer it up. The goal at a meetup is to identify people you want to invest in from a networking standpoint.

At these types of events you will often hear about some interesting new technologies. If one is related to your needs, offer up to be a beta tester for them. If you want to endear yourself to a fellow entrepreneur, give them detailed feedback on their product. Getting decent feedback can be very challenging and is generally highly appreciated. If you later ask that entrepreneur for help finding a good partner they'll be far more likely to help you out.

Very often these events will be sponsored by venture firms to help foster the startup community and give the venture firm a chance to see early stage companies they may want to invest in. Some of these events may be attended by a handful of people and others in large cities can have hundreds.

Don’t expect to get into a detailed conversation if the venue is very large. Come prepared with a pocket full of business cards and don’t hesitate to pass them out. After the meetup send follow up emails to people and ask if they would like to get together for a cup of coffee. You can do lunch if you really hit it off with the person but it’s generally better to meet at a local Starbucks; it’s much easier to talk to someone when you don’t have a mouthful of food, there’s no worrying about who picks up the tab and if it turns out the meeting is awkward you can wrap it up much more quickly.

Introduce these new members of your network to others you know and don’t hesitate to ask if you are looking for someone with specific skills. People attend these kind of events to both help themselves and in return help others. The more you work with these folks the more likely you are to find someone with the skills you need.

A word of warning: don’t just connect people for the sake of connecting. If you know someone that builds high-end web sites and their average engagement is $10K, don’t send over a contact that is looking to get some quick on-page SEO optimization done unless you know that’s a strength of theirs. If you connect people of quality together you are far more likely to get quality connections in return.

Partnerships Happen 
Schools, existing businesses and family environments are fertile breeding grounds for business partnerships because they center around communities of like minded individuals that are already working towards a common goal.

Cultivate your network carefully and over time you will find that what you are really doing is inserting yourself into a new community, one populated by fellow entrepreneurs that are hungry to build up their business. You may not find a new business partner overnight but in time either the right person will pop up on your radar or you will have learned enough that maybe you don’t need that partner after all.