003 FRIENDS AS BUSINESS PARTNERS
Very often we come across friends starting businesses, forming partnership firms. Some of them develop into great businesses and some die soon. Reasons for prosperity as well as failure are numerous. Here is a beautiful article by Shri Jeff Cornwall, Director, Belmont University Center for Enterpreneurship. http://forum.belmont.edu/cornwall/archives/002329.html In addition to the guidelines given by Mr. Jeff Cornwall, I wish to add the following precautions: 1. Better to start businesses only with longstanding tested friends , say of more than five years relationship. Care should be taken while entering into partnerships with class mates/school mates/college mates who shifted to other places for some years and have come back in a new incarnation. They might have acquired new habits, beliefs, ethics and work methods. We have to again spend one or two years with them studying their habits. 2. Better to reproduce every term and condition into writing . Oral agreements can...