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Starting a company with a partner is a long-haul journey, akin in both duration and intensity to a romantic relationship: it demands trust, compatibility, and a shared vision. Far from being just a financial tool, the business plan is a true litmus test for your alignment and your ability to synchronize. It offers a space to confront your values, your ambitions, and your ways of working. Co-creating such a document is about dreaming together while facing reality: it clarifies your roles, expectations, and boundaries. It’s better to uncover potential differences early on than to let them erupt down the line. In this sense, the business plan is a foundational conversation between two future co-founders.
Most startups are founded by two or three people, and partnerships between two co-founders account for nearly half of all new ventures. Starting a company rooted in innovation and geared for hypergrowth is rarely a solo mission or the work of a “Mexican army” of founders.
Even when the co-founders have known each other for years, the decision to start a company together calls for deep reflection, because embarking on a business venture shifts the relationship into a very different register. All the more so when a potential partner has only recently entered the picture: it’s crucial not to mistake speed for urgency when the time comes to actually launch the startup.
Building a Startup as a Long-Term Journey
Let’s remember that the median timeline for the exit of a “successful” startup funded by venture capital is around 9 years from inception: roughly 3 years before the first seed round, followed by another 6 before an actual exit. For startups that aren’t VC-backed, that timeline stretches to 15 years (source: Avolta). Clearly, launching and growing such ventures has far more in common with a marathon than a sprint.
The comparison may be imperfect, but since the most common startup configuration involves two co-founders, it’s interesting to line up those 9 to 15 years with the average 8 to 15 years of shared life before separation in romantic couples. While median durations before divorce vary greatly across cultures and legal systems, one thing becomes clear: an “entrepreneurial couple” is likely to stay together at least as long as, if not longer than, many traditional couples. This is especially true when the company’s sale isn’t the predetermined outcome of a hypergrowth strategy driven by investors eager to cash out in under 7 years.
The Business Plan as a Compatibility Test
Drafting a business plan together is, in many ways, a compatibility test for co-founders. Just as romantic partners talk about their future and their shared vision of happiness, potential business partners should co-create a business plan to align their visions, ambitions, and values. The business plan is far more than a financial document: it’s a revelatory process that forces you to ask and answer the right questions.
If those deeper questions aren’t addressed early on, they’re likely to surface later, often during the intense, high-stakes phase of hypergrowth, much like unresolved issues in a relationship that resurface under pressure.
A shared projection, far beyond the numbers
In many respects, a business plan is a tool for shared projection: drawing one up together is like dreaming as a duo, with your feet firmly on the ground. It’s not just about forecasting sales or planning funding rounds; it’s about envisioning a common journey. Who does what? How will tough decisions be made? What happens if the business takes off quickly or if it doesn’t work at all?
Just like the early stages of a love affair, the beginnings of a startup are often driven by enthusiasm, implicit promises, and a kind of baseline trust. But building a company takes more than shared feelings, it calls for clear agreements, deep commitment, well-defined roles, and the ability to navigate the unpredictable together, constructively.
Complementary or incompatible neuroses?
Building a business plan together means facing the test of reality, embracing the idea that it’s better to disagree now than down the line. This process may reveal irreconcilable differences, and paradoxically, that’s great news. It’s far better to realize you’re not a good match before signing the incorporation papers than after months of misunderstandings and silent tensions.
In other cases, this work of aligning values and planning growth strengthens the bond between co-founders, much like a couple who communicates well and shares a vision of the future. Sometimes, what makes it work isn’t the absence of neuroses, but the fact that yours and mine complement each other.
This shared structuring process allows co-founders to build stronger mutual trust, establish a solid working foundation, and define a common course.
Discovering one another through the Business Plan
Writing a business plan together, even before you officially launch the startup, is an exercise in balancing dreams and realism. It’s a bit like taking a long trip together before deciding to move in for life: you discover the other person, their strengths, quirks, sense of humor, and habits. But you also discover yourself.
In such an exchange, each person is led to clarify their priorities, to express what they’re seeking from the venture, what they’re willing to commit to, and what they’re unwilling to sacrifice. The business plan becomes a mirror reflecting not only the shape of your project, but the very outline of your partnership, and your own boundaries.
Starting a company is an emotionally, intellectually, and sometimes even physically intense commitment. Drafting a business plan together is a foundational conversation, one that can prevent countless misunderstandings down the road.
And if it’s true that the average “entrepreneurial marriage” lasts longer than many traditional couples, then those, too, are worth building on solid ground, not just with desire, but with clarity.
Business Plan and Potential Sticking Points
The following business plan framework applies to most organizations, although you can add other dimensions if necessary.
- Company History, Vision, and Mission
- Leadership, Organization, and Governance
- Identified Needs and Target Market
- Value Proposition and Business Model
- Competition and Competitive Advantages
- Development Objectives and Schedule
- Financial Forecasts
Several elements are likely to constitute sticking points between partners, beyond the topics already discussed above:
What values, vision, and objectives for value creation and impact do we share through the creation and development of this company?
- How will the capital and our roles within the company be distributed? Which decisions should be made collectively, and which decisions should be made individually?
- What sacrifices are we willing to make, particularly in terms of workload and compensation? For how long? What do we do if the business doesn’t take off?
- How do we proceed if we disagree? Do we want to bring on an additional partner or even investors, and how will we organize ourselves?
- What happens if one of us wants to step down? Do we need to sign a shareholders’ agreement to clarify this point and other key events?
Some gray areas can become real dividing lines. Hence the importance of an in-depth discussion to clear up any misunderstandings. The business plan is a wonderful space for co-creating the foundations of your company. Even if there are considerable differences related to the very nature of the relationship, we see that the metaphor « founding couple = loving couple » is a fruitful one. Starting a business is not just a business matter: it is also an existential pact.
