The partnership looked perfect on paper: complementary skills, aligned industries, and shared ambition. Eighteen months later, it ended in silence, blame, and a legal dispute neither founder anticipated. Unfortunately, this outcome is far more common than it appears.
Since 2020, statistics show there has been a surge in new business formation, and a significant share of these ventures involve two or more founders. Partnerships are being formed at unprecedented rates, and a painful share are quietly falling apart.
To understand why, I spoke with Kyle Kane, Co-founder of onSpark and an entrepreneur who has built and advised high-growth ventures and spent years examining patterns of partnership failure across founding teams. He previously built one of America’s fastest-growing companies, reaching Inc. 500 status in less than 18 months, which gave him direct exposure to how early-stage partnerships form, strain, and break under scale. The pattern he describes is not rare; it is increasingly visible in a startup landscape that has expanded rapidly since the pandemic.
What the Research Says About Partnership Selection
Research helps explain the underlying forces that shape how founders choose and navigate partnerships. One useful lens is attachment theory, which suggests that people differ in how they feel secure in relationships. Some seek reassurance and connection, while others prioritize independence and control. These patterns show up early and determine how trust is formed, how conflict is handled, and how risk is interpreted.
As a result, two founders can evaluate the same opportunity and reach very different conclusions. What feels like strong alignment to one may feel uncertain or restrictive to another. These differences are often less about the business itself and more about how each person responds under pressure.
According to Kane, this goes deeper than most founders recognize. “The wound that destroys most partnerships was never in the contract,” he explained. “Founders raised in environments where love was conditional—where approval had to be earned and could always be revoked—spend their adult careers unconsciously recreating that dynamic in their business relationships.” It’s an uncomfortable idea, especially for founders who believe they’ve already done the internal work, but in his view, it is a recurring pattern among ambitious founders.
The Validation Problem
This shows up most clearly in how founders choose partners. While business partnerships fail for many practical reasons—execution issues, market shifts, or mismatched expectations—there is often a deeper driver underneath: founders tend to select partners who feel validating, not necessarily those who are most aligned.
Kane describes this tendency directly: “Founders who keep picking the wrong collaborators are almost always operating from scarcity and intuition alone. What they need is a system they can trust precisely because it is not distorted by the wounds they carried into the room.”
Research supports this observation. Studies suggest that individuals with higher attachment anxiety show heightened sensitivity to relational threat and altered trust decisions under uncertainty. These patterns can quietly shape how people evaluate fit, especially in high-stakes or emotionally charged decisions, such as forming a partnership. As a result, early “fit” can reflect emotional safety rather than true long-term alignment.
Why “Chemistry” Feels Reliable But Isn’t
Most founders evaluate partnerships the way they evaluate relationships: through an immediate sense of connection. That early “chemistry” often comes from feeling understood, chosen, or validated. On the basis of that purely sensory impression, they proceed to make decisions that will shape the next decade of their professional lives.
In practice, many partnerships form through informal networks—friends, former colleagues, or accelerator connections—where trust is built quickly through conversation rather than sustained evidence of behavior over time. Kane notes, “Founders who have been burned, betrayed, or abandoned in formative relationships bring that history into every negotiation. They either extend trust recklessly to people who remind them of someone safe, or they withhold it entirely from people who have done nothing to earn the suspicion.”
Research on first impressions shows that people form rapid judgments about trustworthiness within minutes of interaction. These early signals can strongly shape decisions before any real behavioral data is available. The challenge is that what feels like alignment in the beginning is often just emotional resonance. That sensation is not partnership compatibility in any rigorous sense, because it reflects a psychological need being met in real time.
Action Steps
If you are considering a partnership, there are a few ways to slow down and evaluate your decision-making before committing.
- Audit your last three partnership decisions: Before looking at business outcomes, examine your motivation. Did you feel excited, seen, or relieved when the opportunity came up? Those emotions carry information. Ask yourself: What need was this partnership meeting beyond the strategic one? As Kane put it, “The question isn’t just, ‘Is this a good partner?’ It’s, ‘Am I choosing this partner from strength or from hunger?’—and the answer determines everything that follows.”
- Separate your non-negotiables from your desires: Founders often confuse what they want with what they actually need. Before conversations begin, write down what a partnership must have to be worth your time, capital, and reputation. Keep that list steady when evaluating anyone specific.
- Build trust gradually instead of giving it all at once: Trust is more durable when it is earned through small commitments kept over time, rather than extended on goodwill alone. Let partners prove reliability before you fully depend on them.
- Get outside perspective before signing: An advisor without a personal stake can often see what emotional investment hides. This outside view helps reduce blind spots and improve judgment. Bring them in before the agreement is finalized, not after.
Bottom Line
Founders think they’re being strategic when choosing partners, but emotion often plays a bigger role than they realize. Without awareness, the same patterns show up again. Strong partnerships come from clear judgment, not gut feeling. In the end, it’s whether the decision comes from clarity or unmet need—and that’s what shapes everything that follows.
© 2026 Ryan C. Warner, Ph.D.
