Balancing both ends of business partnership for effective result.
You know, as I typed the title, I realized I’d stumbled onto an oxymoron: “Controlled Chaos.” But nothing better captures the story I’m about to tell you, my dear readers—a true story about a vision, a leap of faith, and a company that had to break a partnership to survive.
Back in 2020, during that long lockdown, I had an epiphany. I was a business executive, a step away from being CEO at a company where I’d worked for years. The solitude of that period gave me the chance to nurture an idea I’d been sitting on: a new venture to fill a gap in the industry I knew so well. So, in August, as the world began to open up again, I took the leap. I resigned, found a core partner I knew I could trust, and we launched our company.
Three months in, with the help of two more business executives, we landed our first multi-million naira deal. It was a massive win, and in my excitement, I made a decision that would nearly sink us. Since these two extra executives had helped, I figured they should become equal share partners in our new, three-month-old company. Just like that, we went from two to four executives, each of us used to earning a mid-six-figure salary.
This is the “koko” of the story: Four executives. Three months old. Equal share partners. But with far from equal contributions.
The recipe for disaster was complete. I, as the CEO who started the company, realized my input would always be significantly higher than the others. Yet we were all equal partners, and expenses were eating into our cash flow. Dissatisfaction and strife set in, our momentum stalled, and every decision became a grueling fight. A three-month-old company was saddled with the problems of a ten-year-old one, and it couldn’t afford it. We were going down.
I had to make a drastic, difficult decision to save the company. I called the partners together, laid out the grim picture, and asked two of the executives to exit the partnership and become service providers. I kept one partner who was critical to our business at that stage. This raised a lot of dust. There were arguments, threats, and character assassination. But in the end, the partnership was dissolved. At that point, we had already made a poor contract decision that cost us thirty-five million naira of investors’ money.
Yet, from that “controlled chaos,” something remarkable happened. The company didn’t just survive; it thrived. Three years later, we have a team of thirty staff, three solid revenue streams, and a valuation in the “dash-dash million dollars” range from a US-based venture capital firm. The partners who exited? They still serve the company as contractors to this day.
Lessons?
I’ll let you glean your own. For me, it proved that the right partnership is essential for growth, but so is knowing when to make a painful choice to protect your vision.
Don’t get it twisted, though. The right partnerships still work. They’re one of the five requirements you need to grow a business at speed, and we’ll dive into those next week.
Love, peace, and curtains.
P.S. This is a true story, and I am the business executive who started the company.