• Drift Help Center
  • Partners
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • About Us
    • About Us
    • Leadership Team
    • About Us
    • DEI
    • About Us
    • Careers
    • About Us
    • Leadership Principles
    • About Us
    • Newsroom
drift logo
  • Product
    Everything starts with a conversation
    Drift Conversation Cloud

    A single platform for personalizing conversations at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

    Qualify and convert visitors
    Conversational Marketing
    Build quality pipeline
    Conversational Sales
    Deliver customer support
    Conversational Service
    powered by
    Integrations
     
    Conversational AI
     
    Reporting & Analytics
  • Use Cases
    • For Marketing
      • Generate High-Quality Leads
      • Power ABM Campaigns
      • Personalize Web Experiences
    • For Sales
      • Jumpstart Conversations
      • Improve Sales Efficiency
      • Engage Target Accounts
    • For Service
      • Automate Customer Support
    • By Industry
      • Financial Institutions
      • Manufacturing
      • Professional Services
      • Technology
  • Case Studies
  • Resources
    Learn
    Blog
    Books & Reports
    Events
    Webinars
    Podcasts
    Explore
    Test Drive Drift
    Live Demo
    Conversion Rate Calculator
  • Plans
  • Log In
  • Let's Chat
drift logo Let's Talk
  • Product
    • Product
    • Drift Conversation Cloud
      • Conversational Marketing
      • Conversational Sales
      • Conversational Service
      • powered by
      • Integrations
      • Conversational AI
      • Reporting & Analytics
  • Use Cases
    • Use Cases
    • For Marketing
      • For Marketing
      • Generate High-Quality Leads
      • For Marketing
      • Power ABM Campaigns
      • For Marketing
      • Personalize Web Experiences
    • Use Cases
    • For Sales
      • For Sales
      • Jumpstart Conversations
      • For Sales
      • Improve Sales Efficiency
      • For Sales
      • Engage Target Accounts
    • Use Cases
    • For Service
      • For Service
      • Automate Customer Support
    • Use Cases
    • By Industry
      • By Industry
      • Financial Institutions
      • By Industry
      • Manufacturing
      • By Industry
      • Professional Services
      • By Industry
      • Technology
  • Case Studies
  • Resources
    • Resources
    • Learn
      • Blog
      • Books & Reports
      • Events
      • Webinars
      • Podcasts
    • Explore
      • Test Drive Drift
      • Live Demo
      • Conversion Rate Calculator
  • Plans
  • Log In
  • Let's Chat
  • Drift Help Center
  • Partners
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • About Us
    • About Us
    • Leadership Team
    • About Us
    • DEI
    • About Us
    • Careers
    • About Us
    • Leadership Principles
    • About Us
    • Newsroom
Log In

What I learned about picking partners

September 9, 2019
Like what you’re reading?

Stay connected and get The One Thing delivered straight to your inbox.

Subscribe

“Many people you think are individual achievers, in fact, have either a strong spousal partner over many years or a business partner who’s either in the background, not given enough publicity or less egocentric.”

– Michael Eisner

I’ve never been good at being alone.

Which may sound strange, because as you may know, I’m an introvert — so I’m constantly seeking time to be by myself. To be alone with my thoughts and recharge from people around people and being “on.”

But while I do need that time alone, it’s also always been important to me to have a partner in something. And I know that who I partner with — in business, and in life — is one of the most critical decisions I’ll make.

Warren Buffet once said, “…in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. If you hire somebody without integrity, you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”

In the past I used this approach to picking business partners, focusing on integrity, intelligence, and energy. But over time, that switched and I unknowingly started following Charles Koch’s framework for picking a partner, which is around shared vision, shared values, and complementary capabilities.

I believe that if you have all three, you will be successful. Because in most of the businesses I’ve seen fail, it’s not because the founders chose a bad idea, or the wrong category. It’s because of bad partner dynamics — either picking the wrong one, not being clear on who owns what, picking people who are too much like you, or picking people you can’t trust.

Think about my co-founder, Elias and me. We have complementing capabilities — he’s extroverted, while I’m introverted, I focus on things I’m more naturally good at, like marketing, product and writing, and he focuses on things he’s better at, like teams, people and engineering.

We have a shared vision of what we want to do from a business standpoint, and most importantly we have shared values — which gives us the ability to guess what the other person is going to say and stand-in for the other when needed.

So the next time you need to choose a partner — ask yourself: do we have complementary capabilities? A shared vision? The same values? And if you can say yes to all three, you’ve found the right person.

– DC

Get The One Thing

Habits, mental models and tools from Drift's CEO and our favorite role models delivered right to your inbox every single week.
Sign me up
drift logo
  • Product
    • Platform
    • Conversation Cloud
    • Conversational Marketing
    • Conversational Sales
    • Conversational Service
    • Conversational AI
    • Integrations
  • Learn
    • Resources
    • Blog
    • Drift Insider+
    • Conversion Calculator
    • Case Studies
  • Support
    • Drift Help Center
    • Partners
    • Professional Services
    • Security & Compliance
    • Contact Us
  • About Drift
    • About Us
    • Diversity Equity Inclusion
    • Careers
    • Leadership Team
    • Newsroom
    • Brand Assets
    • Drift Store
  • Get Drift
    • Pricing
    • Test Drive Drift
    • Drift for Startups
    • Mobile App
    • Video Mobile App
    • Drift for Chrome
    • Get a Demo
Terms Privacy Policy Drift Status Sitemap © Copyright 2023 Drift.com, Inc.