Entrepreneurs often get burned by a failed investment (like a bad ad agency) and become hesitant to invest in that area again. This is a cognitive trap. The first loss was the money spent; the second, more significant loss is the opportunity cost of not trying again with a better strategy.

Don't treat partnerships as a magical fix. They are a scaling mechanism. If your core sales process, messaging, or product-market fit is weak, a partner channel will only magnify those problems across a wider audience, just as it would with your successes.

To repair a struggling partnership, first listen to raw, unfiltered feedback. Then, frame performance gaps not as failures but as shared revenue "opportunities." This shifts the conversation from "sell more for me" to "how can we grow your business together," positioning you as a strategic advisor.

Drawing from his experience partnering with Apple, Solomon cautions that most large-scale partnerships fail. For a partnership to succeed, it must have 'compelling glue'—meaning deeply aligned incentives, a shared purpose, and a governance structure that can overcome the natural friction between two different organizations.

After working out 22 distressed joint ventures during the GFC, the key lesson was that partner quality dictates outcomes more than the deal itself. When things go wrong, good partners collaborate to find solutions, while bad partners create conflict, making even a good deal untenable.

A truly exceptional founder is a talent magnet who will relentlessly iterate until they find a winning model. Rejecting a partnership based on a weak initial idea is a mistake; the founder's talent is the real asset. They will likely pivot to a much bigger opportunity.

A project that fails financially can still yield your most valuable opportunities. Tim Ferriss's advisory work for StumbleUpon was a "zero," but the strong relationship he built with its founder led directly to his role as an early advisor at Uber. Optimize for relationships, as they transcend any single project's outcome.

The biggest unlock for a successful long-term partnership is to stop keeping score. Instead of tracking contributions and demanding reciprocity, one should define their own standard for being a good partner and live up to it. This approach avoids the bias of overvaluing one's own contributions, preventing transactional resentment.

Instead of jumping directly to an acquisition, de-risk the process by first establishing a partnership or licensing agreement. This allows you to test the technology, cultural fit, and market reception with a lower commitment, building a stronger foundation for a potential future deal.