Look at the verse below. It beautifully captures the ancient wisdom of Ecclesiastes 4:9-10:

Two are better off than one, because together they can work more effectively. If one of them falls down, the other can help him up. But if someone is alone and falls, it’s just too bad, because there is no one to help him.

This truth applies as much to modern business as it does to anything else in life.

No one built the tech giants alone.

When we look at the history of the world’s most successful companies, an obvious pattern emerges: solo founders often struggle until they find their missing puzzle piece.

• Apple: Steve Wozniak had the brilliant engineering mind to build the first Apple computer, but it was Steve Jobs who had the vision to package, market, and sell it. Wozniak alone might have just given his designs away for free; Jobs alone had no technical product to sell. Together, they made history.
• Facebook: While Mark Zuckerberg is the face of the company, he couldn’t build it alone. He relied heavily on Eduardo Saverin for the initial capital to keep the servers running and soon brought in Dustin Moskovitz to help code and scale the platform beyond Harvard.
• Instagram: Kevin Systrom originally built a cluttered, struggling app called Burbn. It wasn’t until Mike Krieger joined him as a co-founder that they stripped away the noise, pivoted purely to photos, and launched the massively successful Instagram.

The Nigerian Startup Reality

Years ago, someone told me that the primary reason startups fail so much in Nigeria is because everyone is trying to be a founder. We all want to be the “boss.”

The statistics back this up. The documented reality of entrepreneurship in Nigeria shows that 80% of startups fail within their very first year. Data shows a 61% failure rate within the first three years.

Standing alone in Nigeria means facing harsh economic policies, inflation, and grueling capital-raising challenges all by yourself. When one person bears the entire weight of operations, strategy, and funding, they break faster.

But if startups could merge their visions and resources together, they would become a much greater force capable of weathering the storm.

My Journey: From 21 Failures to iPropty

I know this solo struggle intimately. I have struggled with every other business I started, with none succeeding or lasting. During my campus days alone, I started 21 different businesses. Every single one of them failed.

But a massive shift happened at iPropty. When my former workplace colleague joined me, it made all the difference in the world.

Suddenly, we had:

• A collision of ideas: Our combined perspectives solved problems I couldn’t figure out alone.
• Shared burdens: We pooled our time, energy, and resources.
• Encouragement in the day of need: So many hurdles that would have utterly collapsed me instead strengthened us, simply because we were two. When one of us fell down, the other helped him up.

Two is better than one

I can’t speak for marriage on this topic yet, maybe I will when I get married! But for now, in business, I can confidently say that two is absolutely better than one.

However, a partnership only works if you are pulling in the same direction.

Just ensure you choose the right partner for your business. We will discuss exactly how to do that tomorrow.

– Ayodeji.