Happy New Peer

Happy New Year.

Happy New Peer.

If you’ve never collaborated productively with anyone before, may this be the year you do.

May you pick a co-pilot (or maybe two co-pilots, or three, or even four) and make for the stars.

Without second guessing yourself.

While history is equally on the side of projects and companies with and without collaborators (here’s Ryan Carson of Treehouse on why you should go it alone)…

….there are plenty of people who think 2 heads, 2 hearts and 2 engines are much better than one.

Paul Graham of Y Combinator is one of them.

With the exception of Drop-box, Graham famously never funds start-ups that have just a single founder behind them.

Even in the case of Drop Box, Graham (as he explains in this Forbes magazine article) instructed founder Drew Houston to get a co-founder on board.

As to how to pick a co-founder, it’s great if you are friends with them already.

But if you are looking for a co-founder, or want some advice on how to pick one, you could try....

These 10 points by Michael Fertik in Harvard Business Review.

Or this advice from Brian Hamilton in Inc magazine.

Or Manu Kumar who tells you how to avoid the mistakes he made in this piece on Founder.Dating.com.

Once you have picked your co-passenger for your adventure, the top most question on your mind might be how to make things work.

How do you use each other’s ideas wisely?   

Divide responsibilities?

Make the best of what each one brings to the table? 

Not tread on each other’s toes or corns (ouch)?

Have no fear.

Bright Hub is here.

With The 9 Elements of Successful Collaboration - written by Jean Scheid.

Collaborating on a research project?

Here’s a guide to effective collaboration from NCBI (The National Center for Biotechnology Information).

You may also find some useful nuggets in this blog post about collaboration, which curiously enough, starts with a story about a penguin.

Meanwhile, while you take all this in, I thought you might enjoy a little quiz about collaborations.

Here goes -

Q1: Which of these well-known companies was not founded by college buddies?

Google

Yahoo

E-Harmony

Reddit

Proactiv

Answer: E-Harmony. E-Harmony was founded by Neil Clark Warren, a psychologist and author of relationship advice books, along with his son-in-law Greg Forgatch.  All the other companies on this list were founded by college classmates, and 3 out of 4 of them were, in fact, founded by Stanford classmates, Proactiv being among them.

Q2: Which of these co-founders of companies discovered that one of the things they had in common with each other was preferring Bob Dylan to the Beatles? Was it….

Sandy Lerner and Leonard Bosack of Cisco?

Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo?

Paul Allen and Bill Gates of Microsoft?

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple?

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben and Jerry’s?

Answer: It was Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.  You may not have known that.  I didn’t either. I learned of it from this Los Gatos Patch interview with Steve Wozniak.

Q3: All these are celebrated collaborators.  How quickly can you fill in the blanks?

Rodgers and……….

Lewis and……….

Gilbert and ………..

Masters and………

Lords  and………

And the answers are:  Hammerstein, Sullivan, Clark, Johnson, Taylor

Q4: Next, do you know the fields of work of the people listed in the last question? Can you match them to the list provided below:

Sexology

Opera

Expeditions

Fine Clothing

Broadway Musicals

Answers: Masters & Johnson - Sexology, Rodgers & Hammerstein - Opera,  Lewis & Clark - Expeditions, Lords & Taylor - Fine Clothing, Gilbert & Sullivan - Broadway Musicals.

On to our next question about collaborators….

Q5: Which of these collaborators were not siblings?

Orville and Wilbur

Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia

Walt and Roy

Lucy and Desi

Jacob and Wilhelm

Richard and Maurice

Answer: Lucy and Desi …who were husband and wife. Bonus question 1: What are the last names associated with the names above? Bonus question 2: How fast can you associate the following with the correct pairs from the list above?... 1) It’s A Small World 2) The History of Flight  3) Ethel and Fred  4) The Golden Arches 5) The introduction of kindergarten education in America , and 6) Hansel and Gretel.

Q6: And finally, for all you lovebirds out there, the husband-and-wife teams listed below are behind some really cool and well-known companies.  Can you identify the companies from just their names:

Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum

Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake

Michael and Xochi Birch

Sehat Sutardja and Weili Dai

Eugene and Natalya Kaspersky

Answers:  Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum (VM Ware); Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake (Flickr); Michael and Xochi Birch (Bebo); Sehat Sutardja and Weili Dai (Marvell); Eugene and Natalya Kaspersky (Kaspersky Lab).

Another famous husband and wife partnership is Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown of the legendary architectural firm Venturi Scott Brown and Associates, and you can read about their dream team here.

I am also excited to note that one of my Incentive Compensation implementation assignments was at a wife and husband run company blazing a trail in the field of online video training. You can read about Linda.com and their fabulous offerings here.

I hope you enjoyed this post about collaboration and it inspires you to embark on a fulfilling and fruitful collaboration of your own – with a friend, a soul mate, a spouse, a sibling, a classmate, a workmate, or someone you run into that turns out to be a great fit. 

Happy New Year.

Happy New Peer.

As Henry Ford put it….. 

"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success."

Thanks for reading and see you next week...M