Guide to Choose the right business partners

How to find and select the right business partners for your idea or company.

By ChrisW

Many people have come up with a great business idea only to realize that they don't have all of the skills or experience necessary to turn their idea into a thriving company. Having the right partners is essential to getting many companies off the ground, but finding the right people has always been a huge challenge for most entrepreneurs. There are a number of reasons that you might need a business partner, including:

1) You need someone with specialized experience, such as an electrical engineer, to help develop and create your product

2) You need someone with sales or marketing experience to help sell your product or service.

3) Your idea requires more work than one person can possibly get done.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Know your own skills and experience

In order for you to be able to find a business partner who's skills and experience complement your own, you should first take some time to think about what skills and experience you'll be contributing to your startup. Try writing down the main tasks that you'll be able to do. Think along the lines of functional areas. For example, if you're skills and experience are in sales and marketing you'll want to write down all of the sales/marketing/business development tasks that you'll be doing.

I recommend: Take a look at your skills in a variety of different areas by using a tool like the one offered by ACINet.Org or using another career/skills/experience assessment tool.

Know what type of business you want to start

Before you go out and start looking for business partners, first consider exactly what type of business you want to start. If you're idea is developing an electronic product and you're not an engineer, you'll probably need a business partner with electrical engineering experience. On that same note, if you're starting a greeting cards company, you'll probably have no need for an electrical engineer. So, it's important to put together a business plan that outlines your idea and what skills and experience you'll need to make that idea a success.

I recommend: For help putting together a business plan, you can check out SCORE, which is the Service Corps of Retired Executives. SCORE offers free assistance to people who are starting a business.

Find the business partners you need

Once you've finished putting together a business plan, you can then use that plan to look at all of the skills and experience that your company will need. Then, check out which skills and experience you can offer to your company and which skills and experience you'll need to find from an employee or a business partner. Then, start looking for business partners that have the skills and experience that you're looking for and are interested in working with you.

I recommend: PartnerUp is a great free resource that is designed to help you find business partners with the skills and experience that you need. You can also try posting an ad for a business partner on a site such as Monster, CareerBuilder, or HotJobs. Although, you'll probably find that using a specialized service such as PartnerUp will get more responses from entrepreneurs and people who are interested in starting businesses.

Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

If there's one point that you remember after reading this article, it should be that you should always look for business partners who are able to offer the skills and experience that your company needs. Although you may be tempted to make your family members or friends your business partners (and, in some cases that might work), most successful startups that are founded by partners have a business partner with specific experience that completements the other partner's experience.

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