the goose

Partnerships and deals are what it is all about.  Few are talented enough to do it all by themselves and seeking out and working with good people seems to be key to success – unfortunately.  I say unfortunatly because working with other people is where much of the risk lies.  This week Mike Arrington fell out very publically with his CrunchPad partners and it got me to thinking that I should try and flesh out my own thoughts on what makes a good deal.

I’m okay, your okay: I’ve gotta feel like there is mutual respect in any partnership I enter.  I may laugh at my partners over the top sales patter and he may guffaw at my badly spelled emails, but underneath there has to be some kind of mutual respect.

Aligned Goals: Make sure that the outcomes are aligned.  Not everyone wants the same thing out of the same project but I try to make sure those goals are in harmony.  You most commonly see this when an entrepreneur engages a development team to build a website for him.  The development team (is rightly) focused on billing hours and building reputation.  That is not exactly the same as being focused on a successful product launch.  I have met many would-be web-entrepreneurs who have fallen fowl of this mistake.  While I used to think that products could be pushed out in a month or so I’m now starting to come around to the idea that these projects need a technical resource fully invested for the duration of the product life-cycle.

Beware of secondary-gains: A little while ago I agreed to build a website for a partner of mine.  The website was for his own business but the idea was that he could use that site to promote a product we were both working on.  Looking back, this may have been a mistake on my behalf.  Whether or not the project succeeded or failed, he had his new website.  We weren’t invested in the same way and perhaps that meant we weren’t both committed to making the project a success.

Go with your gut: By far the easiest way to avoid trouble in a deal is to go with your gut.  Your gut isn’t PC, smart or even right all the time, but sometimes that icky feeling might not just be a dodgy curry but your collective sub-consciousnesses sending you a real warning.  If I had one rule of thumb to follow, this would be it.  No matter how much your conscience brain wants something to work – your gut knows better.

There are a lot of users out there.  There are also a lot of great people who might just be working at slightly cross purposes to your own.  I’d like to think that pretty much no-one is set on screwing you over – it can just happen that way sometimes.  Of course – its up to no one but yourself to make sure that doesn’t happen.

What do you think makes for a good dea?