Why the Chris and Mark of Abraham Harrison Works

People always ask me, “who is this Mark Harrison,” or “do you really need him?”  They even ask, “what does he do for the firm?”  I think there is a belief that any company worth its salt should have been started by a single, strong, founder — a Ford, if you will — and surge forward on the power of his single-minded vision.

Building a company is so much more than just that vision — it is much more than an idea, it is a creation that needs to be fed, maintained, grown, cultivated, and sustained.

When I started Abraham PR, I was a “single parent” but it wasn’t until Mark Harrison came on board around five-months in,  just about now three years ago, that we were able to start growing Abraham Harrison past a little consulting and digital PR practice into a proper company with 35 staff doing client service work in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Russian for global clients like OLX.

Our biggest client, OLX, is a case in point. Just today, Fabrice Grinda, co-founder of OLX, wrote The Power of Two: 2 > 1! in celebration of the entrepreneurial company of partners, which I have generously excerpted below — but it isn’t complete — I cut a lot out, so please, rather, go visit the original blog post yourself.

The Power of Two: 2 > 1! (Heavily Excerpted)

Looking at the most successful Internet and technology companies of the past few decades, it’s shocking to see how many have two or more founders: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Youtube, Skype, Yahoo to name a few all have multiple founders. Even Oracle which is closely associated with Larry Ellison has multiple founders. It’s much harder to come up with super successful Internet companies which only have one founder. Amazon and eBay seem to be the exception and Jeff Bezos is all the more exceptional as he is still CEO. The same applies to up and coming Internet companies which also seemingly all have multiple founders: Gilt, Yelp, Facebook and Twitter.

I would not have expected this result. Running a successful starting requires clear and rapid decision making: you ask everyone’s opinion and make an informed decision and assess its impact. If it’s a product decision, you A/B test the top few decisions and keep refining. There is no time to find the democratic consensus, the field is too dynamic and competitive and from experience the consensus decision is usually worse than an informed rapid decision followed by rigorous A/B testing with continuous refinement. I would have suspected that having multiple founders would slow down the decision making as the co-founders would have to agree on a decision before it gets taken.

Moreover, most marriages end in divorce. Why would it be any different for business relationships especially given the stress that the two partners are under and the financial stakes involved? In fact, I would have expected that companies with multiple founders to be more likely to fail than companies with one founder for that very reason as two disagreeing founders would tear the company apart.

If someone did the analysis, I would bet that companies with multiple founders are more likely to fail than companies with one founder, but when they succeed, they are more likely to succeed in a bigger way.

There are four reasons why having a partner might make a huge difference:

1. If you can’t convince your friends to join you, you probably should not be starting the business.

[...]

2.Being a startup founder is incredibly lonely and it’s great to have someone to pick you up when you are down and keep you grounded in reality when you become exuberant

[...]

3. It’s necessary to have a strategic sounding board

[...]

4. There is so much work to do, it’s good to have someone you completely trust to split it with

[...]

The conclusion is clear: if you are creating a startup get at least one partner!

[...]

Share on Tumblr