Asher's Blog

Starting a business with someone is a lot like entering a marriage. You may begin with excitement, shared ambition and a compelling picture of what the future could become, but the true quality of the partnership is revealed later—under pressure, through disappointment, in seasons when money is tight, and at moments when both people must choose between protecting themselves and protecting what they agreed to build.

This is why I no longer treat the decision about whom to build with casually. A business idea can change; a product can be redesigned. A strategy can be abandoned when the market teaches you something new. But the wrong person beside you can make every necessary change harder, more painful and sometimes impossible.

I did not always understand this as clearly as I do today. The first time I had the opportunity to choose a business partner, the partnership went very well. We remain best friends today. Because that experience was so positive, I did not fully appreciate how much of it was the result of the person’s character, the quality of our relationship and the values we shared. I knew I had enjoyed a good partnership, but I had not yet developed the language or discernment to explain why it worked—or to recognise what would make another partnership fail.

It took other experiences, including some genuine heartbreaks, to teach me what I actually need from the people with whom I build.

Character comes before competence

Today, I begin with personal qualities. I look at character. I look at values. Most importantly, I look for long-term alignment of values.

Skills matter enormously, but skills answer only one question: Can this person do the work? Character answers the questions that become decisive when the work gets difficult: Can I trust this person? Will they keep their word? What will they do when our interests temporarily diverge? How do they behave when nobody is watching? Can they place the long-term health of the company above the need to win an argument today?

Jim Collins describes this principle in Good to Great as “First Who, Then What.” His argument is that people who build great organisations first ensure that they have the right people “on the bus” before settling every detail of where the bus will go. Strategy matters, but the right strategy in the hands of the wrong people is still dangerous. The right people can think, adapt and remain committed when reality forces the strategy to change. Jim Collins explains the concept here.

When I speak of aligned values, I do not mean that we must have identical personalities or agree on every issue. In fact, a strong partner should be able to see what I cannot see and challenge what I have assumed. Alignment means that beneath our different experiences and perspectives, we have a shared understanding of what is important: how we treat people, what we will not do for money, how we handle conflict, what success means to us and what kind of company we are willing—or unwilling—to become.

Ambition may bring two people together, but values determine whether they can stay together without destroying one another.

I value friendship, but I no longer force it

Friendship matters deeply to me. I do not want to spend years building something important with people who are indifferent to me as a person. I pay attention to whether someone values friendship with me, whether they pursue a real relationship and whether there is mutual care beyond the immediate transaction.

However, I now make a clearer distinction between friendship and business. When I begin a business relationship today, I allow it to begin as a business relationship. I do not rush to call it friendship, and I do not use the language of friendship to create a closeness that has not yet been earned. We agree on responsibilities, expectations, ownership, decision-making and the outcome we want to pursue, then, we begin to work.

The quality of friendship, if it is truly there, reveals itself over time. It appears in the way a person responds when you make a mistake; in whether they can celebrate your contribution without feeling diminished; in how they speak about you when you are not in the room; in whether they remain honest when honesty becomes costly; and in whether disagreement makes them seek understanding or revenge.

This distinction has become important to me because friendship can strengthen a business partnership, but the label of friendship can also hide a weak one. Calling someone a friend does not eliminate the need for proper agreements, clear roles or accountability. And deciding to do business with someone does not automatically make that person a friend.

Paul Graham once observed that the low points in a startup can be so severe that very few people can bear them alone. He wrote that among multiple founders, the feeling that “I can’t let my friends down” can become an extraordinarily powerful force. But he also warned that many founder disputes could have been avoided if people had been more careful about whom they chose at the beginning. His conclusion is direct: “The people are the most important ingredient in a startup, so don’t compromise there.” His full essay is worth reading.

I have learnt to hold both truths together. Real friendship can give a partnership uncommon resilience, but friendship should be discovered through consistent behaviour, not assumed because two people have started a company together.

I Want People Who Can Focus

The next quality I look for is focus. We live in a time when people are constantly exposed to what everyone else is building, funding, announcing and celebrating. Every week produces a new trend, a new technology and a new business model that appears to be the future. If you are not careful, you can spend your entire life reacting to what is currently receiving attention.

I want to build with people who are aware of the world but are not controlled by its noise—people who can distinguish a meaningful change from a fashionable distraction. They can listen to the market without abandoning the mission every time the market becomes excited about something new.

Focus is not stubbornness. A focused person can change their mind when the evidence changes. What they do not do is change direction simply because attention has moved elsewhere. Paul Graham makes this distinction when he compares startups to science: founders must follow the evidence when it points toward a better idea, but changing ideas every week can be just as fatal as refusing to change at all. He describes that balance under “Obstinacy.”

The people I want beside me can hold an outcome in view for a long time. They can work through periods in which the effort is repetitive, public applause is absent and the result has not yet become obvious. Building a meaningful company requires this kind of emotional and intellectual stamina.

I Want People Who Can Think

I also look for people who can think—not merely people who can follow instructions quickly.

A strong colleague does not only ask, “What do you want me to do?” They also ask, “What are we trying to achieve? Why are we doing it this way? What might we be missing? Is there a better route to the outcome?” They can take an unclear problem, separate facts from assumptions, identify the most important variable and develop a reasoned recommendation.

This matters because business moves too quickly for every answer to come from one person. A company cannot scale if everyone waits for the founder to perform the thinking and then distributes tasks to the rest of the organisation. I need people who can own problems, exercise judgement and improve the quality of the decisions we make together.

Independent thinking does not mean endless argument or intellectual performance. The goal is not to prove that one is the smartest person in the room. The goal is to help the team see reality more clearly and act more effectively.

I want high performers with evidence behind them

Potential is valuable, but for the most demanding roles I increasingly look for evidence of performance. I want people who have achieved difficult results, preferably results related to what we are now trying to achieve.

Business is fast-paced and unforgiving. The market does not reward a company because its team meant well, worked long hours or held many meetings. Eventually, a business must deliver something people value, serve its customers reliably, earn revenue and make decisions quickly enough to survive.

That reality changes the standard for whom I want to build with. I want smart colleagues, but intelligence alone is insufficient. I want people who can turn intelligence into outcomes. I want people who know how to finish, who take responsibility when something goes wrong and who do not require constant supervision before important work moves forward.

A track record is not a guarantee, and everyone deserves opportunities to grow. But past performance gives me evidence about how a person behaves when a goal is difficult, resources are imperfect and excuses are readily available. For a critical role, that evidence matters.

I want people who can receive hard feedback

One of the qualities I now value most is someone’s ability to receive feedback—especially difficult feedback—without allowing it to damage the team.

This is not about wanting people who agree with me or accept every criticism without question. I can be wrong. A mature colleague should be able to challenge my feedback, offer context and disagree respectfully. What matters is whether we can examine the work honestly without every correction becoming a personal crisis.

People who cannot separate feedback about their work from a verdict on their worth make excellence very difficult. The team begins to avoid the truth in order to manage emotions. Problems remain unsolved because everyone is searching for softer language. Resentment replaces learning, and eventually the strongest people either become silent or leave.

At the same time, tough feedback should never become an excuse for humiliation, aggression or careless leadership. Feedback must be specific, fair and directed towards improvement. The standard is not brutality; the standard is candour joined with respect.

Harvard professor Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety is useful here because the concept is often misunderstood. Psychological safety does not mean lowering standards or removing accountability. Edmondson explicitly warns against treating it as an “anything goes” environment. The strongest learning cultures combine the freedom to speak honestly with high expectations for performance. Her explanation distinguishes safety from the absence of standards.

That is the kind of team I want: one in which I can tell you the truth and you can tell me the truth; one in which neither of us needs to destroy the relationship in order to defend a point; one in which feedback improves the work instead of poisoning the people doing it.

Choose for the journey, not merely for the beginning

I have come to believe that we often choose partners based on what is attractive at the beginning: complementary skills, enthusiasm, access, intelligence or a shared opportunity. Those things matter, but they do not tell us enough about the journey.

The better questions are harder. Can this person remain focused when the world becomes noisy? Can they think when the playbook stops working? Can they perform when the conditions are difficult? Can they receive correction without withdrawing, retaliating or destabilising the team? Are our values aligned strongly enough to survive success as well as failure? Is there the possibility of genuine friendship here—and enough maturity not to pretend that friendship exists before it has been proven?

These are not questions I learnt to ask from one successful experience. Some of them were taught to me by disappointment. Some were clarified by heartbreak. But that is part of the gift hidden inside painful experience: if we are willing to examine it honestly, pain can become discernment.

I still believe deeply in partnership. I know what it feels like to build with someone and come out of the experience with both the work and the friendship intact. But I no longer assume that every talented person is the right person, every friendly relationship is a friendship, or every exciting opportunity deserves a partnership.

Ideas matter. Capital matters. Timing matters. But the people with whom you choose to build will shape every one of those things.

So choose for the pressure, not only for the promise. Choose for the long journey, not merely for the exciting beginning. Above all, choose people whose character can carry the weight of whatever the two of you are hoping to build.

References

• Jim Collins, Good to Great: First Who, Then What
• Paul Graham, The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups
• Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Psychological Safety Does Not Equal “Anything Goes”