NYC Tech Week Offers Lessons For Creating Successful Startup Partnerships

Forbes

01-06-2025

It's Tech Week 2025 in New York City and is the place for startups, companies and venture capitalists to network during hundreds of privately hosted events across the city.
New York Stock Exchange's Celebration of Entrepreneurs event with Stifel on June 2nd will be a hot ticket. The event is honoring New York-based entrepreneurs and investors Kass and Mike Lazerow. The Lazerows are the husband-and-wife duo behind the successful startups Buddy Media and GOLF.com as well as investing in more than 100 startups like Liquid Death.
The Lazerows spent the last year capturing their secrets of success in their book Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story About the Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success. I had the opportunity to interview the couple prior to the event. It's no surprise that one of their secret weapons is building strong partnerships.
The duo is not the first married couple to have a successful partnership in business and in life.
The comparison between business and relationship partners is an apt one. Both require partners to get along with each other, learn how to manage stress and tough times, and hope for a successful and fruitful future. And both can get messy sometimes, as the Lazerows humorously and candidly detail in their upcoming book.
Below are the lessons they shared on a critical question: how to choose the right business partner. Whether you are an entrepreneur or an established company seeking a strategic business partner to grow your business, the advice below will help you find partners that can guide you to new heights.
There are several important elements of a successful business collaboration, including the concept, business plan, and cash flow. For Mike, one element stands out as the most important factor. 'The most important decision that a founder makes after they decide to start a company is who they start it with,' he shared in the interview.
The Lazerows are passionate about this answer based on multiple experiences. Mike shared an interesting perspective: you often don't understand the importance of this lesson until you make the mistake of not getting it right.
Mike recalled teaming with visionary artist Jonathan Cramer. Mike and Cramer were friends outside of business and Mike was excited to support his friend's business venture.
Jonathan and Mike teamed up to bring Jonathan's concept, known as Shape Matrix, to market. But despite the momentum and investors, the commercial applications they'd developed never took off.
Mike believes that the relationship between the co-founders—and their different visions for the partnership—was the main reason the startup never flourished.
Mike is a serial entrepreneur, and Jonathan is a gifted artist.
'Let's just say we were not the most compatible co-founders, and the company suffered because of it,' he said. They approached the partnership from different perspectives, and as Mike now recognizes, they should have talked more deeply to ensure that they were both on the same page.
The good news is they recognized this and were able to part ways amicably – something that does not always happen.
Starting a business as the sole founder is an excellent approach for many entrepreneurs. In fact, companies with solo founders often survive longer and generate more revenue than businesses launched with multiple founders.
But not all entrepreneurs have the skills needed to go it alone. While solopreneurs have more freedom, they're also left to do more by themselves, and risk and responsibility are entirely on their shoulders.
It can be helpful to share the entrepreneurial burden—especially if you make a wise choice for your business partner.
It's no surprise, then, that some of the world's leading companies have multiple founding partners. Microsoft and Apple, for example. Or Cisco and Clif Bar.
But before taking the leap to starting a company with another co-founder, the Lazerows stress the importance of asking a series of questions:
By asking the right questions, partners can make sure they're truly aligned and avoid potential issues.
That's not to say that co-founders should be carbon copies of each other.
While co-founders should have things in common with each other, such as values and respect, they should also possess complementary skills, perspectives, and strengths too, as Kass says, to 'fill in your gaps.
Simply put, business partners should understand their strengths—and play to them—while allowing their collaborators' talents to shine.
Kass compares partners leading a company to guiding a boat. One partner is at the front looking for land, while the other is trying to get everybody to paddle at the same speed and in the right direction.
Kass stressed that successful companies have teams that don't worry about each other's work. 'There's this implicit trust, which I think is massive, and the leaders of the company specifically know what they don't know,' she said.
She continued, adding that successful entrepreneurs 'recognize they know what they don't know and are not intimidated by working closely with partners that know more than they do.' This helps avoid micromanagement which is often a cause of tension and frustration.
For Mike and Kass, ensuring alignment of vision and values is essential to help business founders create a successful partnership.
They stress spending lots of time asking questions like 'What do you want to accomplish together?' and 'What are the principles that you hold dear?'
Culture—a team's shared beliefs, customs and behaviors—is another must-have, noting you can't spell culture without 'cult.'
'When you're running a company, how you create and disseminate the values and morals of the company, not just the mission, but who we are as people and who we're going to hire, that cult. I always say you're building a cult in the culture,' shared Kass.
Building a successful culture is a sign of accountability, a shared work ethic, and similar values and has been linked to success.
Starting a company can be messy. But as Kass and Mike Lazerow know very well, picking the right co-founder can make the journey much easier.