The Power of Two: Why and how to partner for your search

Searchfunds are often led by a single searcher, but partnering up can create strategic advantages. The right partnership can harness the power of combined skills and diverse experiences. The collaborative nature of a partnership not only enhances decision-making and problem-solving but also more evenly distributes the intensive workload inherent in the search process. Beyond the practical benefits, and perhaps most importantly, a partnership offers vital emotional and moral support, key to navigating the taxing search fund journey.

A partnership is no guarantee of sunshine and roses, though. Finding a partner requires its own due diligence process. Once you've found and decided to work with a partner, a successful partnership requires constant upkeep and maintenance. Seven months ago Dillon and I decided to partner up for our search, and these are some of the most impactful strategies and learnings so far:

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Have as many conversations as are necessary to fully understand each other's goals and anti-goals, working preferences, communication styles, and most importantly, make your best effort to understand how the other handles conflict. This is something you’ll really only be able to figure out as you work together. Some questions to consider asking each other:

1. What's your end goal? / What motivates you?

2. What does success look like for you? What are your anti-goals?

3. What skill are you excited to learn and/or work on?

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Constantly remind each other of your goals. Since the start, we've made a concerted effort to constantly remind each other of our shared goals. We start our weekly meeting every Monday with this exercise. It allows us to check-in with each other to make sure we’re still equally committed and most importantly, having fun.

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As with any relationship, professional or otherwise, you must actively work to create a culture of open communication. You’re going to discover more about each other as time progresses. You’re going to get frustrated and annoyed, and make assumptions about the other. Don’t let your annoyances or frustrations turn into assumptions about the other person’s motives. Resentment is the death of all relationships.

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It's kind of cheesy, but at every opportunity possible, show gratitude for the other's efforts and gas each other up. Cultures of open communication enable the frequent exchange of feedback, often more critical in nature. In an environment where feedback is freely exchanged, positive reinforcement not only helps solidify changes in behavior but is a great salve for any potential wounds to the ego.

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Proximity is the most obvious mitigation strategy for execution risk, but it's no guarantee and not every partnership has the opportunity to work in person.

At Midnight, we’re both located in NYC but don't have a space where we can co-work every day. Life and its stressors ebb and flow, often affecting productivity and effectiveness despite our best efforts. To help ensure our productivity and thus maximize our chances of a successful transaction, we've found the following to be effective:

1. Both being from tech, we're constantly running experiments to test hypotheses and incorporate new learnings into our M&A process. We track these experiments in a spreadsheet, where there's an assigned owner, start date, expected/minimum effort, etc.

2. We meet for a couple hours in person every Monday morning. It's a great ritual to sync up after the weekend, kickoff the week, get status updates on in-progress experiments, and make sure we're aligned on the week's priorities.

3. Tuesday - Friday, we have a daily two hour “office hours” virtual meeting scheduled on our calendars. These meetings are where we go over our backlog of experiments, discuss high priority deals in the pipeline, and any other agenda items. We use the remainder of our time to work individually (on mute). Without an office, this has been the most helpful strategy in creating the spontaneous and collaborative nature of working in person.

What have I missed? What other strategies are out there that partners have found to be effective?