Partnership is critical for meaningful success in any field. As I have written before, history is littered with stories of the vital importance of collaboration in producing success across various fields, from science to music, sports, literature, and many others.
The upsides of a meaningful partnership are many and well-documented. The importance is also widely recognized in the world of entrepreneurship. Programs like Y Combinator explicitly state that they prefer startups with at least two founders and encourage solo founders to seek out co-founders before applying to YC. If you look at the entrepreneurial success of the past, this emphasis makes perfect sense. I've written about this here.
But partnership is not easy. It comes with the territory. Every strength comes with its corresponding weakness. As a partnership can make your business, it can also break it. In fact, partnership failure is one of the major causes of business failures. While entrepreneurs obsess over market fit, fundraising, and growth metrics, the real threat often lurks within the founding team itself. Research consistently shows that partnership conflicts rank among the top reasons companies fail.
This is particularly true in Bangladesh, where cultural norms around conflict avoidance and unspoken expectations create a tricky landscape for business partnerships. Our cultural tendency toward indirectness, where people remain reticent to discuss difficult matters like money openly, creates a fertile ground for unresolved tensions. We prefer tacit expectations over written contracts, relationships over legal frameworks. This approach works in personal life but can prove catastrophic in business.
The baggage accumulates silently. Resentments fester. Misaligned expectations multiply. By the time partners finally address these issues, the damage is often irreparable.
Over the years, I have seen many promising ventures fail largely due to partnership failure. As we discussed at the beginning of this article, a meaningful partnership is essential for building a successful business. At the same time, if the partnership goes wrong, it can kill the most promising venture.
This makes understanding the dynamics of partnerships and how to make partnerships work an indispensable skill. And what better way is there to learn about something than from someone who has been there and done it?
To that end, I asked Raisul Kabir bhai, one of my favorite humans and the CEO of Brain Station 23, in a recent interview, how he thinks about partnership and his experience of building effective partnerships at Brain Station 23.
While Brain Station 23 had multiple partners from the beginning, Raisul was the only working partner until 2012, when he brought in his friend, now Brain Station 23’s CTO, Mizanur Rahman, as a working partner. Raisul said in the interview that the move changed Brain Station 23 and helped it unlock new growth opportunities for the company. However, the partnership wasn’t easy. In the early days, it went through challenges to the point of breaking. But they worked on it, learned from the mistake, and it served the company well. Today, Brain Station 23 is one of the largest software outsourcing companies in Bangladesh.
He shared valuable insights into how to think about partnership and how to build enduring partnerships.
When Mizan joined Brain Station 23 in 2012 as an executive partner, the company was plateauing at around 60-70 people. Raisul was handling sales and marketing alone, stretched thin. Bringing in Mizan as a partner seemed like the obvious solution. The idea was that it would help unlock new growth for the company. And it did, but it also came with challenges that surprised them both.
"Initially, there was some friction when Mizan joined," Raisul explains in the FS interview. Both men had been running their own shows, Mizan as a solopreneur, Raisul as the sole working partner and CEO at Brain Station. Suddenly, they found themselves in a new dynamic and neither understood how to navigate. The collision of two entrepreneurial egos, each accustomed to unilateral decision-making, created immediate tension.
As a result, the partnership broke at one point, and Mizan decided to leave, causing new challenges for the company. It is important to note that Raisul and Mizar are long-time friends, and the partnership was an outcome of discussions over a long period of time.
This is where most partnership stories end, in acrimony, failed ventures, and wasted potential. But Raisul and Mizan did something different. They talked. They reconciled. They examined what went wrong. And crucially, they committed to not repeating the same mistakes.
When Mizan returned, something fundamental had shifted. They had learned that partnership, as Raisul puts it, is like a marriage. It requires continuous work. There will be friction. There will be disagreements. But when trust exists, you can work it out.
The payoff was extraordinary. After Mizan rejoined, the company started growing rapidly, moving from 60-70 people to over 200. Today, Brain Station 23 has nearly 1,000 people and continues expanding.
"Partnership is not easy," Raisul reflects, "but if you can make it work, it can be truly transformational and can create significant growth. You can make the pie bigger."
Through his experience navigating multiple partnerships, Raisul has developed a clear framework for what makes partnerships succeed or fail. We can call it a three-pillar approach to building a meaningful partnership. The three pillars are: integrity, empathy, and fairness
First, integrity. This means being honest and keeping your word. Raisul emphasizes that examining integrity is critical when choosing a partner. If someone has a history of failing to keep promises or lacks commitment, making the partnership work becomes extremely challenging. You simply cannot trust that person to follow through.
The good news, Raisul points out, is that most people have decent integrity. Serious integrity issues are relatively rare. Still, he recommends conducting background checks, talking to previous colleagues, and looking for major warning signs before entering a partnership.
Second, empathy. This is the ability to understand and acknowledge the other person's perspective. When empathy is present, even significant friction becomes manageable. Partners can disagree, sometimes vehemently, but still work things out because they understand each other's reasoning.
"When a person has the ability to understand the other person's perspective," Raisul explains, "even with friction, you can work things out."
He notes that high integrity doesn't automatically guarantee empathy. He's seen partners with impeccable integrity who simply couldn't communicate effectively or consider alternative viewpoints. Without empathy, the partnership becomes a constant struggle. With it, almost any disagreement can be resolved.
At Brain Station 23, the partners now encourage healthy disagreement. Raisul's partners challenge his positions regularly, not negatively, but constructively. He often goes with their views after hearing their reasoning. When he puts forward his own view, he explains the logic clearly. This works because both integrity and empathy are present.
Third, fairness in structure. Partnership structure matters enormously. If a partner feels they've been dealt an unfair hand, whether in equity distribution, decision-making authority, or compensation, the partnership will struggle regardless of integrity and empathy.
Raisul recommends the book Slicing Pie by Mike Moyer for its detailed framework on structuring business partnerships and shareholding. The key is ensuring everyone feels the process is fair from the beginning. Fairness isn't just important for partnerships; it's crucial in any relationship or engagement.
"If a partner thinks he is dealt an unfair hand," Raisul says, "that partnership would not work."
These principles sound straightforward. So why do so many partnerships in Bangladesh fail despite good intentions?
The answer lies in how we approach difficult conversations. Bangladeshi culture values harmony and indirect communication. We avoid confrontation. We expect others to intuit our needs without explicitly stating them. In families and friendships, this works through years of shared history and deep familiarity.
In business partnerships, this approach can be disastrous.
When you cannot directly discuss money, ownership, responsibilities, and expectations, you create a vacuum that fills with assumptions. Each partner develops their own narrative about what's fair, what they're owed, and what they've contributed. These narratives diverge silently until they collide catastrophically.
The solution isn't to abandon our cultural values; it's to recognize that business partnerships require a different mode of communication.
You must talk about the uncomfortable things: compensation, equity splits, decision rights, and exit scenarios. You must write things down. You must revisit these agreements as circumstances change.
This doesn't mean every detail needs a legal contract, but the important things do. The allocation of ownership. The division of responsibilities. The mechanisms for resolving disagreements. The conditions under which someone might exit.
While integrity, empathy, and fairness form the interpersonal foundation, successful partnerships require something more: robust systems and structure.
Raisul points to "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" as an essential resource for understanding team dynamics. The book addresses crucial questions: How do you build trust? How do you embrace healthy conflict? How do you achieve commitment? How do you establish accountability? How do you maintain focus on collective results?
These aren't just philosophical questions; they're practical challenges that partnerships face daily. Having frameworks to address them makes the difference between partnerships that thrive and those that merely survive.
At Brain Station 23, the company invested in processes and systems.
These systems do several important things. First, they create predictability. Partners know when and how issues will be addressed, reducing anxiety and speculation. Second, they depersonalize conflict. When you have a structured process for making decisions or resolving disagreements, it's easier to separate the issue from the individuals involved. Third, they create accountability. Clear systems make it obvious who's responsible for what and whether they're delivering.
If you're considering entering a business partnership, or if you're currently struggling in one, here's a practical framework based on Raisul's experience:
Before entering a partnership: Evaluate the person's integrity thoroughly. Talk to people who have worked with them. Look for patterns of keeping commitments or breaking them. Remember, you're not looking for perfection; you're looking for serious red flags.
Assess their capacity for empathy. Can they articulate and understand perspectives different from their own? When you disagree, do they dismiss your concerns or genuinely engage with them? Watch how they handle conflicts with others; that's likely how they'll handle conflicts with you.
Design a fair structure from the start. Use frameworks like Slicing Pie or consult with advisors who understand partnership dynamics. Make everything explicit: equity, roles, compensation, decision rights. Write it down. Have difficult conversations upfront rather than avoiding them.
Within an existing partnership: Create regular forums for honest conversation. Don't wait for problems to explode. Establish weekly or monthly partner meetings where you can raise concerns, align on strategy, and address emerging tensions before they become crises. Listen intently to each other without judgment. Listening remains a critical skill in making any partnership work.
Build in systems and processes. Adopt an operating framework like EOS or Scaling Up. Establish clear accountability for different functions. Create mechanisms for decision-making that don't require consensus on everything—paralysis helps no one.
Invest in an outside perspective. Consider bringing in a coach or advisor who can provide a neutral perspective on partnership dynamics. This isn't a sign of weakness; it's a sign of maturity and commitment to making the partnership work.
Be willing to be vulnerable. Raisul mentions that vulnerability allows others to be vulnerable. This is crucial. When partners can admit mistakes, acknowledge limitations, and ask for help, it creates safety for everyone to do the same. This builds trust faster than anything else.
Revisit agreements regularly. What made sense when you started might not make sense as the business evolves. The partnership structure that worked for a 10-person company might not work for a 100-person company. Be willing to renegotiate in good faith as circumstances change.
When facing serious challenges: Don't let things fester. Address issues directly as soon as they emerge. The longer you wait, the more damage accumulates, and the harder the resolution becomes.
Focus on interests, not positions. Try to understand what each partner really needs versus what they're demanding. Often, creative solutions exist that address underlying interests even when initial positions seem incompatible.
Consider professional mediation if you're stuck. Sometimes an experienced third party can help partners find solutions they couldn't identify on their own.
Know when to walk away. Some partnerships simply don't work. If integrity or empathy are fundamentally absent, or if, despite good faith efforts, the partnership remains a challenge, it may be better to end it.
Listen to each other.
The challenges of partnership are real and significant. But the potential rewards justify the effort and risk.
Raisul attributes much of Brain Station 23's remarkable growth to successful partnerships. Mizan's joining enabled the company to break through its plateau and start scaling. Ferdous's partnership opened new doors in sales and relationships. The CFO partnership transformed their financial operations and enabled more sophisticated growth.
"We wouldn't have been able to achieve it without his active involvement in the partnership," Raisul says of Mizan's contribution.
This is the promise of partnership done right: not just additive growth but multiplicative growth. The whole becomes genuinely greater than the sum of its parts. Different skills complement each other. Different perspectives challenge assumptions and prevent blind spots. Different networks open different opportunities.
Partnership done right creates resilience, too. When one partner faces challenges, illness, burnout, or personal crisis, others can carry the load. This is nearly impossible for solo founders who become single points of failure.
But accessing these benefits requires getting the fundamentals right: choosing partners with integrity and empathy, creating fair structures, building robust systems, and maintaining honest communication even when it's uncomfortable.
Perhaps the most important lesson from Raisul's journey is this: partnership is not a one-time decision but an ongoing practice. It's not something you do once and check off the list. It requires continuous attention, adjustment, and investment.
In Bangladesh, where our cultural norms can make partnership dynamics particularly challenging, being intentional about these practices becomes even more important. We must consciously create space for direct conversation about difficult topics. We must write down agreements even when our instinct is to rely on relationships. We must establish systems even when informality feels more natural.
The failure rate for partnerships doesn't have to be so high. The key is approaching partnership with the seriousness and intentionality it deserves, recognizing that while it's hard work, it's work that pays extraordinary dividends when done well.
