We often describe partners as a form of “leverage”, as in I personally am able to accomplish more through collaboration with my business partners than I could achieve myself.  I mean partners in the small partnership (like a VC firm) or small team context.  It’s basically the old assertion of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.  And it’s true that one’s partners can amplify the force of any individual.

But instead of the lever, I think a more apt analogy for great partnerships is as a flywheel.  The best partnerships are like a flywheel in that they conserve momentum of the whole entity, regardless of the energy output of any individual partner at that moment in time.  If we were all perpetual motion beings, perhaps sustaining momentum through one’s partners wouldn’t be so critical.  But we’re not.

Let the flywheel keep spinning…