Where to Find the Right Business Partner
Last year David Reinke left his corporate job to start an online fashion rating community, StyleHop.com. He had a business idea and industry knowledge but he lacked something vital. A tech-savvy partner to build the site. Like more than 100,000 others he joined PartnerUp to post his need.
Within a month he found someone who’d worked on several start-ups, Froilan Mendoza. After several conversations, Mendoza quit his job to become chief technology officer at StyleHop.com. Two strangers, now partnered up.
Hint: What’s your passionate interest? Your best expertise? Consider serving the niche you know best with a variation of the StyleHop “wisdom of the crowd” community model? The cornerstone benefit for members is that they can rate and rank what they love or hate. They can get smarter together – on your site
Examples:
• Disc golf aficionados share, compare and rate courses.
• Sewers, knitters and quilters could share, compare and rate patterns.
• Cyclists could share, compare and rate bike trip routes and cyclist-friendly motels, restaurants, stopping points and sights to see.
Do you have an idea for a startup?
Need the right partner to make it happen? From biznik to Open Forum and Downtown Women’s Club there are many great online small business communities for sharing and networking but just one that explicitly exists to find business partners.
PartnerUp will become more valuable, of course, as more partner requests and success stories appear.
Jean Cooley, for another example, revived her house cleaning business by joining forces, via PartnerUp with Dale Treichle. His complementary business provides lawn care and landscaping. Together they are better able to reach and serve their mutual market – homeowners.
Hint: What kind of business partner would increase your ability to reach more people in your target market as Jean and Dale are doing? You could create a new business out of your separate ones as they did or collaborate on outreach with a joint web page, tip sheet or other partnership.
To get you thinking of the kind of partners who could help you, here are some examples of locally-owned businesses that serve the same kind of customers and thus can benefit by partnering:
• Veterinarians, dog walkers and pet stores.
• Detective agency, forensic accountant and business law firm (fraud rises in a bad economy)
• Vegetarian restaurant, farmers market and organic clothing boutique.
Last month SCORE launched a community powered by PartnerUp. Ironically PartnerUp turned to LinkedIn to find a marketing director, proving that it still pays to reach out to all social media when you want to find a partner.
