The Venture Edge

Contrary to the popular idea of entrepreneurs as lone wolves, following their own unique vision of what a business can be, many entrepreneurs actually work with a variety of partners or a management team to start up and grow their businesses. In many cases, the entrepreneur takes the time to carefully spell out the relationships between partners -- who does what, who owns what, and what happens if the partnership breaks up. In some cases, however, these relationships are never formally spelled out. This is a recipe for entrepreneurial disaster, not entrepreneurial bliss.

A few years back, I helped write a book by the name of Lessons from the Edge: Survival Skills for Starting and Growing a Company, by Jana Matthews and Jeff Dennis. In this book, more than 50 entrepreneurs and business owners offered some very candid stories and insights into how they got their businesses off the ground, survived some calamitous business event, and then picked themselves up and rebuilt their lives -- and often their businesses. As it turned out, partnerships with other people -- good and bad -- had a very high impact on the success (or ultimate failure) of many of these businesses.