One thing that becomes clear to many potential business founders while conducting organizational feasibility analysis is that they need one or more partners to help launch their business. You might be a computer programmer with a great idea for a cooking website, for example, but have no experience in marketing or sales. In this instance, you may need to find a partner with marketing and sales experience to launch and run the firm successfully. There are five key criteria to look for in a business partner. You want to get this right because picking the wrong partner or partners can lead to many heartaches and business challenges.

1. Know the skills and experiences you need. Make an honest assessment of the skills and experience you bring to the business and the gaps that remain. Pick someone who fills the gaps. For example, if you are an experienced computer programmer, you probably do not want to partner with another experienced computer programmer.

Pick someone who brings other competencies that you need to the venture, such as marketing or finance.

2. Make sure your personalities and work habits are compatible. While you do not need to partner with a person just like you, you do need to be comfortable with the person you select to join you with your business.

For example, if you would rather work 16 hours a day if that is what it takes to finish a project on time, and your partner would rather quit after 8 hours a day and try to renegotiate the due date for the project, that difference in work styles will invariably create conflict.

Similarly, if you like to wear a coat and tie when meeting with clients and your partner thinks wearing blue jeans is fine, obvious disagreements could surface.

3. Make sure you and your partner have common goals and aspirations. Be sure that you and your partner are shooting for the same target. For example, if your goal is to build a billion-dollar company but growing the company to $10 million in sales and then selling out would satisfy your partner, obvious problems could ensue.

4. Look in the right places. If you do not have someone already in mind, it is important to know where to look for a potential partner. Generic networking events, like Chamber of Commerce mixers, are usually ineffective for finding a business partner. Instead, if you are looking for an engineer, contact engineering trade associations for leads or attend engineering trade fairs. Social networking sites for professionals, such as LinkedIn, can be an effective way to make contacts.

Most cities have startup networking events, such as 1 Million Cups (www.1millioncups.com), and similar events sponsored by local startup incubators and accelerators. There are also online platforms designed to help startup founders find cofounders. An example is CoFoundersLab (www.cofounderslab.com), which is the largest startup community on the Internet.

5. Hire a lawyer. After identifying a potential partner and you are confident that you have satisfied the first four criteria we discuss above, you should hire a lawyer to help you draft a founders’ agreement. A founders’

agreement is a written document that addresses issues such as the form of business ownership you select, what each partner’s role in the business will be, and so forth. It is important to hire a lawyer who is not loyal to any specific partner (even if it is you). Select an impartial person that satisfies everyone’s expectations.....

Discussion Questions:

1. Think about your personality and work habits. What type of person (in terms of personality and work habits) do you think you would work well with and what type of person do you think you would be in constant conflict with?
2. Do you think that forming a business partnership with a close friend is a good idea or a bad idea? How could you go about discerning if a good friend would make a good business partner?
3. Provide some suggestions, other than those we mention in the feature, for places (online or offline) to use to find a business partner.
4. Spend some time looking at LinkedIn. How could you use LinkedIn to help find a business partner?