Questions Potential Business Partners Should Ask Themselves
与人合伙创业前要问的九个问题
Starting a new company with somebody requires a hard conversation. Better now than later.
与朋友合伙创业，需要把丑话说在前头。晚说不如早说。
Molly Baker
莫莉·贝克
You and a friend have a can’t-miss idea for a new business. You’ve got a great name, and the logo is perfect.
你和一位朋友萌生了不容错过的创业灵感。你们为公司取了个超棒的名字，公司标识也很完美。
It is time to ask each other some hard questions.
这时候，你们该彼此探讨一些有难度的问题了。
Talking up front about tough subjects like how you work, how you deal with stress and your expectations for the business can save lots of headaches later. “Most issues are neutral when you discuss them ahead of time,” says Jane Brodsky, who ran a barre-and-spin studio with a partner for 10 years in Washington, D.C. “But in the heat of the moment, issues become personal and larger than they need to be.”
把丑话说在前头，讲明你们如何展开工作，如何处理压力，对生意有什么期许，日后可以避免许多麻烦。简·布洛斯基（Jane Brodsky）与一位合伙人在华盛顿特区经营横杆和动感单车健身工作室，生意已经做了10年。“如果事先讨论的话，大多数问题都是中性的，”布洛斯基说。“但在情绪上头的时候，这些问题就会像是针对个人的，也会被彼此放大。”
Here are crucial questions that should be settled at the start to help make the partnership succeed.
以下是从一开始就应该解决的关键问题，弄清这些问题，能够帮助你们的合伙生意取得成功。
How did your family communicate?
你们的家庭如何沟通？
Maybe you were raised in a family that talked through disagreements to find solutions. But maybe your partner grew up in a house where the loudest voice won. That could be a problem when issues arise in the business: Experts say that when people are under stress, they often fall back on behaviors that were imprinted at home – and different styles could clash.
你的原生家庭也许会通过讨论化解分歧，以寻找解决方案。但你的合伙人或许成长在一个谁嗓门大谁赢的家庭。当你们的生意出现问题时，麻烦就来了：专家表示，人在面对压力时，往往会回归家庭在他们身上烙下的行为方式——不同的风格可能会发生冲突。
At Happy Being, a company that sells nutritionally enhanced teas and drink powders, the three co-founders discussed communication style before they started the business. “We discovered that one partner gets triggered if he feels no one is listening,” says co-founder Dutch Buckley. “It goes back to an early fear of not being heard.” (For his part, co-founder Josemaria Silvestrini says that early on he “definitely needed the validation of being recognized and being right.”)
Happy Being是一家销售营养强化茶和饮料粉的公司，该公司的三位联合创始人在创业之前就讨论过沟通方式。“我们发现，有一位合伙人如果觉得没人听他讲话，情绪会变得激动，”联合创始人杜奇·巴克利（Dutch Buckley）说。“这可以追溯到幼年时对于无人倾听的恐惧。” （而他说的这位联合创始人乔斯马里亚·西尔韦斯特里尼（Josemaria Silvestrini）认为，在创业初期，他“当然需要确认是否得到认可，做得是否正确”。）
So, the three work at making sure everyone has a say in meetings, and they made a rule that no one’s work is ever belittled. On the flip side, when someone on the team accomplishes something, someone else on the team draws attention to it.
因此，三位联合创始人努力确保每一个人在会议上都有发言权，他们还制定了一项规则，规定绝不能轻视任何人的工作。另一方面，当团队中有人取得成就时，其他人会给予关注。
What does success look like to you? And failure?
对你们来说，什么是成功？什么是失败？
While these may seem obvious – like, the business either succeeds or fails—everyone’s definition is different, and they are surprisingly specific. Certainly, monetary goals or anything that can be enumerated will help partners envision each other’s goals. Is one looking to grow slowly with customers and suppliers in the community and get to better than break even after three years, while the other wants to be cash-flow positive in year one and scale quickly to sell the business to a larger entity after 10 years? There’s a lot of success and failure in between those two outcomes, depending on your perspective.
何为成功，何为失败，看似显而易见（就像是，企业要么成功，要么失败），但每个人的定义都不尽相同，而且这些定义特别具体，具体到出乎你的意料。当然，金钱目标或任何可以一一列举的东西能够帮助合伙人设想彼此的目标。也许一方希望与社区的顾客和供应商一起慢慢发展业务，在三年后达到好于收支平衡即可，而另一方想要在第一年实现正向现金流，把规模迅速做大，在10年后将业务出售给更大的实体？在这两种结果之间，有许多种成功和失败，具体取决于你的看法。
Silvestrini of Happy Being recommends hashing it out together on the whiteboard until everyone agrees on an explicit definition of success for the company. “Hopefully, it’s an easy 10-minute conversation,” he says. “Because if founders have different objectives, the boat is going nowhere.”
Happy Being的西尔韦斯特里尼建议大家把想法写在白板上共同讨论，直至每个人都对公司成功的明确定义形成一致看法。“希望这是一次只需要10分钟就能结束的轻松对话，”他说。“因为如果创始人各有各的目标，这艘船就哪儿也到不了。”
What does everyone bring to the table?
每个人能带来什么？
It is crucial to discuss what each partner is contributing to the partnership in terms of expertise, experience, network and money. Kathryn Zambetti, an executive coach specializing in founder relationships, recommends taking an honest strengths-and-weaknesses inventory of yourself and your partner and then discussing what you both bring to the table. The exercise will help delineate which responsibilities naturally suit each partner, and it will highlight areas that will require additional work or outsourcing.
应该讨论每一位合伙人能够在专业知识、经验、人脉和资金方面为合伙生意作出哪些贡献，这具有至关重要的意义。凯瑟琳·赞贝蒂（Kathryn Zambetti）是一位专门研究创始人关系的高管教练，她建议实事求是地盘点你自己和合伙人的优势和劣势，然后讨论双方能为合伙生意带来些什么。这番功课有助于厘清每一位合伙人天然适合承担哪些责任，并能够凸显出需要做额外工作或外包的领域。
The clearer the roles can be defined, the better. If you are opening a bakery, you and your partner shouldn’t both be good at just making bread. Someone needs to handle marketing, suppliers, leases and licensing, financials and hiring and managing employees.
角色定位越清晰越好。如果你要开一家烘焙店，你和你的合伙人不应该都只擅长做面包。有人要负责营销，与供应商打交道，搞定租约和执照，做财务，还要招聘和管理员工。
Why are you doing this?
你们为什么要创业？
You and your partner need to be in complete alignment on your motivations. Does this venture need to support your family or merely add to your vacation fund? Are you doing it to prove your father or your high-school econ teacher wrong? Any answer other than unfailing commitment to the mission or the product is a red flag.
你和你的合伙人需要在动机上完全一致。这次创业是为了养家糊口，还是仅仅为了增加你的度假基金？创业是为了跟你的父亲或高中经济学老师较劲，证明他们说得不对吗？除了对使命或产品的不懈追求，任何其他答案都值得警惕。
“Your north star has to be something bigger than money to succeed,” says Buckley. “People will go through things that test them, but if money is the only motive, that won’t be enough.”
“要想取得成功，指引你的北极星一定得是比金钱更重要的东西，”巴克利说。“人们会经历各种考验，但如果金钱是唯一动机，就经不住这些考验。”
What pushes your buttons?
哪些东西会刺激到你们？
Just like in a marriage, you want to know best how to support and protect your business partner. Understanding what puts each of you in a fight-or-flight mode can be key to getting the best out of each other.
合伙做生意就像经营婚姻，你要清楚地了解如何支持和保护你的生意合伙人。了解哪些东西会让你们双方进入或战或逃的应激状态，可能是调动彼此最大潜力的关键。
Do you need to be consulted on all decisions, or just major ones? Do you need to be recognized as the leader and sit at the head of the table? Do you fear having to downsize your home if the business fails?
是所有决策都得征求你的意见，还是只有重大决策才需要向你征求意见？你需要被人认可为领导者，并坐在会议桌的主座吗？您是否担心如果生意失败，你得把大房子换成小房子？
What does your workday look like?
你们的工作日是什么样？
Does a day at the office mean working 9 to 5? Can the work be done remotely and on your own time? If you work well at night and need rapid responses to questions, is it a problem having a partner whose phone goes on “do not disturb” every evening at 7? Having the conversation and understanding expectations is key.
在办公室上班，是不是一定要朝九晚五？工作是否可以远程进行，工作时间是否可以自己安排？如果你晚上的工作状态很好，并且需要有人马上回答你的问题，而你的合伙人每天晚上一到7点就让手机处于“请勿打扰”状态，这样会不会有问题？进行对话和了解期望是关键。
When Buckley started Happy Being, the team learned that one of the partners got up very early. “I had to tell him, ‘We don’t want 6 a.m. calls.’”
当巴克利创办Happy Being时，团队了解到其中一位合伙人起床很早。“我不得不告诉他，‘我们不想在早晨6点接电话’。”
Do you like taking gambles?
你们喜欢豪赌吗？
A penchant for lottery tickets, Las Vegas gambling or high-adrenaline activities like skydiving shows a potential partner’s tolerance for risk and whether that aligns with your own. There will be countless decisions early on in a business concerning risk, and the partners need to be on the same page.
透过对买彩票、去拉斯维加斯豪赌或跳伞等让人肾上腺素狂飙的活动的偏好，可以看出潜在合伙人的风险容忍度，并判断这与你自己的容忍度是否匹配。在创业初期，会有无数涉及风险的决定，合伙人之间需要达成共识。
So ask about it. You go into the venture planning and hoping for success, but how much money or time is your partner willing to lose if it doesn’t succeed? How much of their parents’ or in-laws’ money would they bet on the partnership?
所以，这个问题要问清楚。你们着手创业，都是抱着成功的打算和希望，但如果不成功的话，你的合伙人容许损失多少金钱或时间？他们愿意把多少来自父母或姻亲的钱押注在这桩合伙生意上？
Is the business more important than the friendship?
生意比友谊更重要吗？
Many business partners start as friends. But would you each be willing to give priority to making the right decision for the business, even if it means possibly hurting the friendship? Would you each be capable of letting the other one go if it was better for the company? Most advisers recommend choosing a partner who has a common business goal and letting the friendship build from that, rather than trying to build a partnership on top of a strong friendship.
许多生意合伙人一开始都是朋友。但是，你们双方是否都愿意把为企业作出正确决定放在第一位，即使这意味著有可能损害友谊？如果对公司有利，你们是否都能够让对方离开？大多数顾问建议选择一个有共同商业目标的合伙人，并以此为基础建立友谊，而不是试图在深厚友谊的基础上建立合伙关系。
“Your business partner will be one of your most intense relationships, but it shouldn’t fulfill every role in your life,” says Amy Jurkowitz, entrepreneur and co-founder of branding adviser Bread Ventures. “You need to be compatible in how much energy you will both put into the business.”
“你的生意合伙人将是与你关系最紧密的人之一，但不应该扮演你生活中的所有角色，”创业者、品牌顾问公司Bread Ventures的联合创始人艾米·尤科维茨（Amy Jurkowitz）说。“关于双方要为生意投入多少精力，你们需要看法一致。”
If the partnership doesn’t work out, how will it end?
如果合作不成功，该如何结束？
A co-founder relationship is a binding agreement with financial and emotional repercussions, just like a marriage. But starting a business has the added stress of having the company – the baby – arrive on day one. If there is a divorce, who gets custody?
与婚姻一样，联合创始人关系是一种具有约束力的协议，会产生财务和感情方面的影响。但创业有一重额外压力：公司（孩子）在第一天就诞生了。如果离婚，监护权归谁？
The more specific you can be about potential breakups, the better. If you are both putting capital in at the start, would you expect to get that out if you exited? What if, several years in, one partner can’t continue to struggle without a regular paycheck and leaves – and the next year the company finally turns a profit or is bought by another company? Would the partner who left get a share of the money?
对于可能出现的分手，应对方案越具体越好。如果双方在创业之初都投入了资金，假如你中途退出，你会期望拿回这些钱吗？假如公司经营了几年，一位合伙人因无法继续忍受收入不稳定而离开了公司——第二年，公司终于实现盈利或被另一家公司收购，这位离开的合伙人能分到钱吗？
These discussions should help make it clear that the survival of the company – and not the partnership or the friendship – is the ultimate goal. Those who have been through a business breakup recommend involving a third party to help sort through these issues at the outset.
这些讨论应该有助于明确，公司的存续——而不是合伙关系或友谊的存续——才是终极目标。经历过生意解体的人建议，从一开始就应该让第三方参与进来，帮助理清这些问题。
