It Takes Two

Do You Have to Be Friends?

From the day Kevin O'Connor, cofounder and CEO of DoubleClick Inc., an advertising company based in New York City, hired Wenda Harris Millard as the firm's executive vice president of marketing, it was unlikely that they would ever be buddies. Millard, 44, the former publisher of AdWeek and Family Circle magazine, is a streetwise East Coast native who dresses in Armani suits and loves to dish media gossip. O'Connor, 37, is a down-to-earth Midwesterner who built his career by running software companies. In meetings, O'Connor is apt to draw diagrams on whiteboards and to use words like "granular" and "productize" - words that don't roll trippingly off Millard's tongue. "We come from completely di/erent worlds," she says. "Sometimes we don't even speak the same language." Two years after their partnership began, they still socialize only "on a limited basis," according to Millard. Their relationship, she says, "is built on trust rather than friendship."

Yet the odd-couple partnership between O'Connor and Millard has made DoubleClick one of the hottest companies in Silicon Alley. Its IPO in February 1998 was such a success that New York magazine dubbed it "the day Silicon Alley became real." This kind of relationship may not be the rule among partners, but it's hardly the exception. Many partners who work in demanding environments separate their work lives from their social lives - even if they started out as friends. "I work hard during the week," says Jon Ferrara, 38, executive vice president at GoldMine Software Corp., a contact-management software firm based in Pacific Palisades, California. "So I like to spend weekends with my wife and baby." Although his partner, Elan Susser, 34, has been a pal since college, Ferrara rarely sees or talks to him away from work.

Most experts agree that it doesn't matter whether partners share interests, go to the same parties, or chum around after work. What does matter is that they support each other on the job -- particularly during the tough times. Susser, GoldMine's president, puts it this way: "You need someone who lifts you up when you're down."

If partners don't have to agree to be friends, what do they have to agree on? The answer: core goals and values. The most successful partners spend long hours together - often before they actually get down to business - hashing out what they're trying to create and how they will collaborate. During this phase, which Sarah and Paul Edwards call the "forming" or "honeymoon" stage, the partnership may seem to be in danger of never moving beyond talk. But it's this communication that lays the foundation for future action; it's at this critical time that partners define the ground rules of their relationship.

"Today, more than ever before, people bring their hearts - not just their heads - to work," says Rosenzweig. "They want to see that the company they're creating embodies shared cultural values. Even a partnership that starts off as a kind of love affair will go awry if it doesn't have certain guiding principles, which include not just a goal but also a shared sense of how to get there."

By the time Gilbert and Day quit their jobs at LucasArts, for example, they had agreed on a vision for their company. First, they wanted to make games of high quality. Each character would be hand-drawn and then scanned into a computer - a labor-intensive process that allows characters a much-wider-than-average range of expression. They also agreed that they would maintain control of their company, even if doing so meant it would grow more slowly than it would if they accepted venture capital unconditionally. Finally, they wanted a "noncorporate" atmosphere. "We wanted work to be fun and free of office politics," says Gilbert. "We were in total agreement on these principles."

Naturally, this forming process is a lot easier when partners have developed a rapport and when they have time to hammer out their differences - as was the case with Gilbert and Day. But many partners, particularly those in larger, more corporate settings, find themselves in the equivalent of a shotgun marriage: They're thrown into a close working relationship with someone they barely know. How do you build shared values with a stranger, especially when you're working under tight deadlines?

You work closely - literally. Millard says that her first three months at DoubleClick were memorably intense, in large part because her relationship with her new partner was so close. She, O'Connor, and two other executives shared a single conference table in a windowless room and had just three phones among them. As uncomfortable as these tight quarters were for Millard (who was accustomed to a corner office with a secretary outside the door), the proximity helped her and her partner to bond quickly. "If we hadn't had that time together - when I'd hear Kevin on the phone, and he'd hear me - I don't know how things would have turned out," she says. "Each of us got to see how the other worked." By the time DoubleClick had the resources to move into a new space with individual offices, O'Connor and Millard had built a strong foundation for their relationship.