How can a business partner help me?
How can a business partner help me?

In the last article, we discussed how to discover your target market. We also addressed the role of each stakeholder in the process of starting a business. Don’t confuse your stakeholders with your business partners. Although the roles may overlap, each stakeholder’s interest is important. Remember the stakeholder table we prepared in our last article? Keep it in mind while you are moving forward.

A good business partner should be compatible with your skills. Firstly, they must develop the existing potential of your idea or company. Then, they should bring in their professional contacts and network. And lastly, their viewpoint and work style should broaden the scope of operations. A good partner will improve the work culture and make it more vibrant and robust. They will promote inter-agency group effort in your company and may even rearrange your workplace.

In times of need, we often turn to the people closest to us for help. You might do the same for your business too. Between November 2018 and April 2019, the RBI conducted a pilot survey on the Indian Startup Sector and found that the most prevalent source of funding was family and friends. They made up 43 percent of the 1246 competitors in the start-up competition. But, keeping your personal and professional lives separate is an art. As workplace dynamics change, they must not reflect in your home. It is easy for one’s emotions to spiral out of control when things get rough. Learning and appreciating work-life balance is an important step towards success.

Remember Benny? Sketching is his forte, but he has no experience of running a business. As a result, he sought a business partner. He has a few friends who share similar skills and interests. Vaishali encouraged him to make a new table stating the qualities of his chosen potential business partners. A glimpse of his excel is below:

So, Benny chose Neha. She brought new talents to his new company, such as management and skilled networking.

At first, negotiating a company plan in a team may appear to be tough. It may be more challenging to share the leadership role. But from a business point of view, having multiple heads is always better because it divides the work pressure and enhances operational performance. Having different points of view reduces the chance of mistakes and disperses the risks and issues that would have fallen on a single person. Transparency and joint efforts reduce the danger of burnouts and delays. It also allows creativity to flow and flourish.

The ideal business partnership is the one that can bring in skill sets that are additive, associative, and complementary in nature. The knowledge gap reduces as the company grows to allow for more flexible and informed decisions. Benny and Neha combined their skill sets and advanced as business partners for the firm’s events.

Neha’s design values have now been integrated into the company’s expertise. Her experience involves creative thinking, from a company’s branding perspective. She is presently engaged with website design, logo design, and digital design of an augmented reality app. Clients can even hire her for design consulting.

Neha is well-connected in the industry and so she brings a lot of experience for the business to grow. The process of raising funds, attracting, and retaining staff has been simplified. She made it easy for clients to provide feedback. Neha seeks advice on the company’s vision from her personal network as well. She is familiar with the design tools, processes, and capitals and has integrated them into the company’s workflow. The workplace profile is now more multi-agency, appealing, and robust.

Thus, a suitable firm partner completes the ‘Founder Market Fit’ in terms of operational excellence. Founder-market fit is a natural, unfair advantage that distinguishes founders from their competition. When reviewing entrepreneurs for future investments, accelerators and early-stage venture capitalists frequently search for it. When companies are young and just starting out, there is not much data or metrics to go on. So, investors rely on the founders to persuade them that there is a market for their product and that they are ones who can make it happen.

If you have a diverse skill set, people will have more faith in your company. Investors will also gain interest to fund your project. For first-timers, having a business partner increases their chance of success. When more than one partner exists, people trust the company’s commitment and value for their time and money. Remember that every partner has a distinct viewpoint and set of interests. Every person has their individual, unique worth.

Next time we will talk about how to assess the person for a business partnership.

About the Writer

Anchal Srivastava is an architect, urban planner, writer, researcher, and scholar. She is a certified GIS specialist from IIRS, ISRO, Dehradun. She is a graduate of the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), Delhi, and Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University (APJAKTU), Uttar Pradesh. She has experience working at the Town and Country Planning Organisation Delhi, Jabalpur Smart City Limited, Suresh Goel & Associates (SGA), APS Green Architects & Associates, and as the head architect at SSAP and Shantiniketan Buildtech Pvt. Ltd.

About the Editor

Nidhi Joshi is a writer, architect, and artist. She experiments with art, calligraphy, and all things Interior Design. She is a graduate of the Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Architecture, Mumbai. She has experience interning at PG Patki Architects.

About the Illustrator

Priya Bansal is an architect and a generalist, currently based out of Delhi NCR. She is a graduate of the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), Bhopal. She has experience working with Studio Juggernaut.
['Ar Anchal Srivastava']
['Startup', 'Partnerships', 'Business', 'Business Strategy', 'Startup Lessons']