Business people often compare a business partnership to marriage. That's not illogical. They are each a serious commitment based on trust that will take up a lot of your time.
I've spent a lot of years wondering how a woman in particular establishes a productive business partnership. Over the years, I've collected up a few real life examples and it's not been very encouraging.
Y Combinator was founded by a dating couple who later married each other. Adora Cheung, one of the partners at YC, founded her company with her brother.
Tracy Young finally found business success when the guy she was dating asked her why she was spending so much time every week with another man and she told him she was trying to see if she could start a business with the guy.
She needed a technical partner, so her tentative cofounder was a programmer. Her boyfriend was also a programmer and essentially suggested himself as a better alternative to this other guy, so she founded PlanGrid with her boyfriend and it went on to become a successful YC company.[1]
The moving company Two Men and a Truck was founded somewhat incidentally by a woman and her two grown sons. If I recall correctly, her two sons were home from college and needed some money and she was like "You can use the truck and advertise your services."
Then her sons went back to school and she kept getting calls for people who needed the service, so she hired men to keep doing the work her sons had been doing for pocket money that summer. She ran it as a side business while working a day job until it became big enough that it needed more of her time and was also capable of supporting her.
On the one hand, that seems discouraging to me because I don't think I am likely to start a business with a blood relative, so it seems to add up to "You, Doreen, will need to sleep your way into a business partnership and GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!" It makes me feel like things are really hopeless for a woman wanting to start a business -- or, at least, for ME.
But that's possibly tunnel vision talking. From the other side, Adora Cheung's brother started his business with his sister, Tracy Young's partner started his business with his girlfriend and Two Men and a Truck was just a summer job and pocket money for her sons and then mom continued running the company on her own after her two sons went back to school.
In the music industry, some of the biggest rock bands were founded by siblings. This includes bands founded by brothers, like The Bee Gees, AC/DC, Van Halen and The Beach Boys. But it also includes girl bands like The Bangles and Sister Sledge and mixed gender lineups like The Carpenters.
Aflac was founded by three brothers, John, Paul and William Amos. I don't know how to readily look up how common it is for big companies to be founded by siblings but I imagine it is somewhat common, like it is with successful musical bands which can also be multi-million dollar enterprises.
Where does that leave me? I have no idea, though it often seems like it leaves me out in the cold.
But the reality is that this is not a girl problem per se. It's a trust problem and men also find it challenging to solve and frequently rely on people already naturally close to them, like siblings or romantic partners.
It just somehow doesn't seem to get interpreted as "He's an idiot who can't make it on his own" when men do that the way it seems (to me) like people interpret it for women.
I think this happened with Tracy. She's ... the founder of PlanGrid. And she talks about how she had this standing Google calendar invite with her potential cofounder. And they would just spend a couple of hours every week just brainstorming. They just thought like, Hey, we have a lot of potential between us. Let's just like talk about ideas on a regular basis and see if we come up with anything. Oddly enough, what actually started the company off is that the person she was dating at the time she had like given Google calendar access, like there was that was that modern step in the relationship. And he was like, "What's this recurring appointment with this guy that's happening for several hours every week. What's going on with that?" And she's like, "Oh, we're trying to think through some ideas for this." And it turns out it's like building basically a way of doing construction documents on the iPad. And he was just like, "What's wrong with you, Tracy? Don't, you know, I'm an iOS engineer. Like why haven't you talked to me about this?" And that's how their company got started.
I've spent a lot of years wondering how a woman in particular establishes a productive business partnership. Over the years, I've collected up a few real life examples and it's not been very encouraging.
Y Combinator was founded by a dating couple who later married each other. Adora Cheung, one of the partners at YC, founded her company with her brother.
Tracy Young finally found business success when the guy she was dating asked her why she was spending so much time every week with another man and she told him she was trying to see if she could start a business with the guy.
She needed a technical partner, so her tentative cofounder was a programmer. Her boyfriend was also a programmer and essentially suggested himself as a better alternative to this other guy, so she founded PlanGrid with her boyfriend and it went on to become a successful YC company.[1]
The moving company Two Men and a Truck was founded somewhat incidentally by a woman and her two grown sons. If I recall correctly, her two sons were home from college and needed some money and she was like "You can use the truck and advertise your services."
Then her sons went back to school and she kept getting calls for people who needed the service, so she hired men to keep doing the work her sons had been doing for pocket money that summer. She ran it as a side business while working a day job until it became big enough that it needed more of her time and was also capable of supporting her.
On the one hand, that seems discouraging to me because I don't think I am likely to start a business with a blood relative, so it seems to add up to "You, Doreen, will need to sleep your way into a business partnership and GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!" It makes me feel like things are really hopeless for a woman wanting to start a business -- or, at least, for ME.
But that's possibly tunnel vision talking. From the other side, Adora Cheung's brother started his business with his sister, Tracy Young's partner started his business with his girlfriend and Two Men and a Truck was just a summer job and pocket money for her sons and then mom continued running the company on her own after her two sons went back to school.
In the music industry, some of the biggest rock bands were founded by siblings. This includes bands founded by brothers, like The Bee Gees, AC/DC, Van Halen and The Beach Boys. But it also includes girl bands like The Bangles and Sister Sledge and mixed gender lineups like The Carpenters.
Aflac was founded by three brothers, John, Paul and William Amos. I don't know how to readily look up how common it is for big companies to be founded by siblings but I imagine it is somewhat common, like it is with successful musical bands which can also be multi-million dollar enterprises.
Where does that leave me? I have no idea, though it often seems like it leaves me out in the cold.
But the reality is that this is not a girl problem per se. It's a trust problem and men also find it challenging to solve and frequently rely on people already naturally close to them, like siblings or romantic partners.
It just somehow doesn't seem to get interpreted as "He's an idiot who can't make it on his own" when men do that the way it seems (to me) like people interpret it for women.
Footnotes
[1] The story about Tracy Young comes from a talk by Kevin Hale where he says she started PlanGrid with "the guy she was dating." in the video How to Work Together. Here is the pertinent paragraph from the transcript of the video:I think this happened with Tracy. She's ... the founder of PlanGrid. And she talks about how she had this standing Google calendar invite with her potential cofounder. And they would just spend a couple of hours every week just brainstorming. They just thought like, Hey, we have a lot of potential between us. Let's just like talk about ideas on a regular basis and see if we come up with anything. Oddly enough, what actually started the company off is that the person she was dating at the time she had like given Google calendar access, like there was that was that modern step in the relationship. And he was like, "What's this recurring appointment with this guy that's happening for several hours every week. What's going on with that?" And she's like, "Oh, we're trying to think through some ideas for this." And it turns out it's like building basically a way of doing construction documents on the iPad. And he was just like, "What's wrong with you, Tracy? Don't, you know, I'm an iOS engineer. Like why haven't you talked to me about this?" And that's how their company got started.