Choosing business partners

acquainted myself with him because he was in the company of Alister who is my personal friend.
I trusted that since Kudzanai was in the company of Alister, the former was as reliable as the latter.
We arranged to go to Darwendale for fishing the following Saturday together with my other friend Alan.

We had an exciting morning and afternoon in the dam with our new found partner.
At the end of the day Alan and I had caught quite a bit of fish. Our new partner did not catch anything.
As we were getting out of the dam, Kudzanai deliberately packed all the fish in his car.
We had agreed to share the catch equally at Marimba Park Service station in town.

When we got to Marimba, Kudzanai was nowhere to be seen. His phone went unanswered.
We waited until Alan convinced me that our new friend had disappeared with the fish.
However, we could not look for him at his house because we did not have his home address.

Up to now we have not located Kudzanai.
Even Alister advised that he did not have information about the whereabouts of Kudzanai.
He said Kudzanai visits him once in a blue moon, but he had no idea of where he works or lives.

This is an example of many partnerships, which start well and end badly. When getting into partnership one needs to work with people he knows very well.
Our fishing partnership that was based on sharing spoils was very successful before we took on Kudzanai.
Kudzanai did not believe in sharing. He believed in having everything to himself. At times choosing wrong partners can destroy your business model.

This was a learning experience for me. A lot of questions cropped into my head.
How could I trust a person who I had just met? Do we judge people based on who they are talking to or who they associate with?

What should one consider before getting into a partnership? Most businesses and individuals have fallen victims to fly by night partners or fly by night suppliers of goods and services.
In most cases the supplier demand deposits before they supply the goods and often disappear after receiving the deposit.
I once partnered a “friend” in a farming venture and the friend disappeared with the harvest.

I am told our undercapitalised banks are at risk of losing money to conmen.
I am told they promise to partner banks by supporting them with cheap deposits to the tune of US$1 billion or more.

Before the US$1 billion (or more) is deposited in the bank accounts, the bank is supposed to pay arrangement or establishment fees.
Once the fees have been remitted these partners vanish into thin air. Many investors have lost money by investing with unscrupulous individuals who collect funds and later divert the funds to buy luxury cars and go

on holidays abroad instead of attending to the core business. The list of unreliable suppliers is endless.
After hearing these experiences one is tempted to think that for one to succeed in business, they must go it alone.

Most people who have been tricked by the so-called “partners” would advise anybody who bothers to hear that partnerships are not worth pursuing.
Despite the problems of partnership there are certain business ventures whose minimum capital requirements can not be raised by one individual.

Are all partnerships therefore doomed to fail?
It is not true that all partnerships fail. The world has recorded some very successful partnerships such as PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Ernst &Young and Deloitte & Touche in auditing and advisory services.

In other fields the following are success stories of partnerships. HP is a partnership between Hewlett and Packard, Microsoft was born out of a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
On the local front NMB Holdings was born out of a partnership between institutional investors and indigenous entrepreneurs so is Interfin, Kingdom Holdings and TN Holdings.
Most successful indigenous companies, which emerged in Zimbabwe after 1990, were a result of pooling resources together by local entrepreneurs and institutional investors.
The most common partnership is marriage. Before we went into marriage, we never sought expert advice on the implications of various marriage contracts in Zimbabwe.

Marriages in Zimbabwe are consummated under customary law and common law (i.e. Chapters 5:07 and 5:11 respectively).
The common aspect brought about these laws is committing two people to long-term contract just like two partners who constitute the business.
Marriage is not an ad-hoc contract. Two parties to the contract constitute the marriage.

It is binding in nature just like long-term partnerships which business people go into. In most cases marriage are based on mutual respect.
People go into marriage contracts to access what an individual of opposite sex cannot achieve on her or his own.
A woman on her own cannot have children just like a man on his own cannot bear children.

Therefore in a marriage set up a woman compliments the man to achieve the desired results i.e. children.
In business, partners are chosen for their areas of expertise and the influence they may have in the society.
Some are chosen for political mileage especially those with known political connections.

Retired politicians or retired service chiefs are normally offered board appointments in the corporate world.
Some board members are appointed for their market knowledge or for their understanding of the corporate law.
Most big companies have professors or lawyers on their board so that the company can benefit from these professionals’ wealth of knowledge.

Some marriages are successful and some fail dismally just like some business partnerships.
A friend who was going through a divorce once and he told me that his marriage was failing because he did not do adequate background check of his spouse before he got married to her.

He was just attracted to her beauty and the fact that she stayed in the leafy suburbs of Highlands.
He regretted his disregard for our culture of actually visiting the spouses’ parents before agreeing to marry her.

He could have picked one or two negative issues which could have assisted in his decision making process.
He however chose to follow emotions instead of reason. Therefore lack of adequate due diligence is one of the major reasons for marriage failures.
Another reason is lack of compatibility. This normally happens to partners who marry and quickly put everything to ink without familiarising with each other.