The only relationship at work that’s a good idea

Bernat Farrero founded 11 companies before Factorial. Of them, he closed 7. What made the 12th such a success?

According to him, his founding team.

“I think that the single most important thing for a business to succeed is the connection between the founding team in the long term. That’s something that worked very well at Factorial. Jordi has been my friend - but also my business partner and someone with whom I love building stuff - for over 20 years.

"Not always have things worked out. We’ve gone through periods in which we had no cash, but we could go through these struggles because we had a very strong founding team.”

Is mixing personal and professional a recipe for disaster?

Considering that 65% of high-growth startups fail due to co-founder-related issues, it’s undoubtedly a relationship you can’t afford to get wrong. But not everyone thinks the way to get it right is by entering into it with a friend.

Noam Wasserman, a professor at Harvard Business School, found that businesses run by married couples, family members, and friends failed most often. The main reason? Avoidance of hard conversations out of fear of hurting each other's feelings.

Not so long ago, we saw a fallout of this kind on the world stage with the high-profile case of former Twitter India chief Manish Maheshwari and former Microsoft senior engineer Tanay Pratap. Together, they founded EdTech software platform Metaversity. Despite initially seeming bound for greatness, tensions between the co-founders reached boiling point, causing investors to offer Maheshwari a $100K payout to leave. When he refused, the company collapsed.

“Founder life can get lonely.”

But, in reality, Wasserman’s concerns don’t seem to be shared by entrepreneurs, especially in the tech world. A miniscule 16% of the 10,000 companies Wasserman surveyed were led by single founders.

Adam Horne , CEO of Open Org, has some insights into why: “I’ve found that if you have the right co-founder, you can move way quicker. Plus two minds are better than one! And founder life can get lonely. It’s nice to have someone to share that journey with.”

Feeling isolated is not conducive to someone’s best work, whereas workplace friendships have the opposite effect. Gallup data has shown that people with friends at work are more likely to ‘engage customers and internal partners, innovate and share ideas, and get more done in less time’.

So wherever you stand, one thing is clear: whoever said “never mix business and friendship” just hadn’t done it right.

6 Non-Negotiables When Choosing a Leadership Team, by Bernat Farrero

Every successful CEO has one thing in common: a strong team behind them. And building that team is one of their most critical responsibilities for a company to succeed.

Download Bernat's tips about how to do so here, for free ???https://bit.ly/3zI81Vd

With Adam Horne

Adam co-founded member network Open Org: On-Demand Culture Support with John Faulkner-Willcocks last year to help under-resourced people teams access resources and support. Since then, they’ve launched a community for small people teams which has grown to 300+ and had over 500,000 downloads of their free resources built & curated for people teams.

???www.openorg.fyi

Q: What are the pros and cons of having an existing friendship with your co-founder?

Adam: I’ve known John as a friend for 13 years now. We’ve always connected on work, culture, and the idea of building something together one day. That alignment over a long period of time has set us up well. We know each other as individuals, and we know we’re aligned not just on what we want to build, but also aligned on personal goals outside of work too. That’s crucial. I’ve found if you’re at different stages of life, or have different needs from your business personally than your co-founder, it can cause problems.

Q: For anyone wanting to follow in your footsteps, what would be your one piece of advice?

Adam: I sort of have 2 but I’ll be clever and roll them into 1 if I can… Network & Connect. In my early days, I didn’t do enough to share early business ideas or meet other founders. I was wary of someone taking my idea, so I kept it hidden, building without feedback or market research. This time around, we’ve seen the power of that. My advice… No one’s stealing your idea.. and if they do, trust that they’ll never do it better than you. Share it and vocalise it. People will help you build the thing. And embrace building a network of other founders with whom you can share the journey. It gets lonely, but you’re all facing the same challenges.

Read the full interview on our blog, including what Adam would have done differently and why he chose to co-found ??? https://factorialhr.com/blog/adam-horne/

? The key to hiring, according to NUDE PROJECT co-founder Bruno Casanovas

Do we need friendship in the workplace? by Omar Durrah

???Workplace friendships can lead to a 36% increase in job satisfaction and 50% improvement in teamwork. (Gupta, 2020; Song & Olshfski, 2008).

???High psychological safety reduces fear of failure, increasing innovative behavior by up to 30% (Hirak et al., 2012).

???Workplace friendships can also result in negative outcomes like gossip and a 20% rise in favoritism, reducing job focus (Morrison & Nolan, 2007).

Words by Emma Baigey, Creative Copywriter @ Factorial

Illustration by Ainhoa Valero Blanquer , Graphic Designer @ Factorial

Motion graphics by Enrique R. Dávila, Brand Design Lead @ Factorial