What is the number one thing you should look for in a partner? 

I thought the answer would be long and nuanced…but it turns out for me, it’s just one word. 

I also thought this would be just for business partners, but it turns out this applies to life partners (eg. choosing who to marry) too.

But since nobody gives a flying f*ck about my marriage advice, I should probably stick to business examples for now (but just know, this one word is also the key to picking a life partner too).

By the way - I can’t tell you how excited I am to have simplified this to 1 word.

Mark Twain once said: “I’m sorry for such a long letter, I didn’t have time to write a short one” - mark twain

Well, then this is the opposite: “Your welcome for such short advice, I thought about this shit for way too long.”

OK before I tell you the word, let’s set the stakes. What’s on the line?

I think picking a partner is the most important transaction you make in life. Marriage literally was invented as a business contract. Marriage was used as contract to ensure land got passed down properly. In greece, the wedding ceremony climaxed when the father would say: “I pledge my daughter for the purpose of producing legitimate offspring” (how romantic)."

(fun fact: marriage was invented about 4000 years ago. Before that, “families” were loose groups of ~30 people, with multiple males, females, and a big ole bucket of children. Today, we call people who live this way ‘residents of Utah’)

Today, your partner in marriage is a lot more than that. It’s the person you love, your friend, you create tiny humans with them. If you marry at 30 (median marriage age) and die at 76 (median life span), and don’t get divorced, you’re spending 46 uninterrupted years (16,790 days) with your partner. That’s more than double the amount of time you spend with your parents or your kids.

Oh and if you get divorced, that’s the biggest tax daddy of them all. You lose 50% of your entire net worth in a day.

So it makes sense to pick a marriage partner well, right? 

Business might be even tricker. There is no structured “divorce” for a business. Unwinding a business partnership is messy. It’s like a quiche but the only ingredients are bitterness, resentment, and a heavy dose of financial pain.

So how do you avoid the headache? How do you pick a partner that’s not just good, but dare I say, great? 

I used to follow Warren Buffett’s advice. He said he looks for 3 things: Intelligence, Integrity, and Energy. 

That’s good, because someone who’s NOT those things (the opposite) would be a dumb, lazy, crook. 

Those 3 criteria have served me well, but once I think I’ve simplified the equation even further. From 3 words to just 1. 

OK Enough teasing (is this a blog, or onlyfans??) – here’s my answer:

When picking a partner, the most important thing is to find someone who is “down”. 

Down is a slang word with many uses: 

• “I’m down for whatever” - Someone who is flexible. You can throw any plan/idea at them, and they don’t flinch. They will roll with the punches. 
• “Down for the cause” - This is someone who puts the team/mission needs ahead of their own. 
• “Down to do it” - Down isn’t just a personality trait (like, ‘smart’). Down is an action word. People who are down take action now. They don’t wait. They don’t overthink. They just start, and figure things out.

Of course you want other things. You want intelligence, uneselfishness, energy, integrity… the wish list of positive attributes is endless. But the most important trait for me is how down they are. 

My business partner Ben is a great example. We’ve worked together for nearly 5 years, and I can’t wait to do another 20. 

He’s the best. We’ve built & sold companies together, done random projects together and traveled together.

Everyone who meets Ben loves him (usually more than they love me, which is annoying, but proof that he’s great) - and my most successful friends constantly ask me how they can “find their ‘Ben’ too”.

So what makes Ben great? He’s smart, but not the smartest. He’s got a good work ethic, but he’s not David Goggins. 

If Ben is one thing - Ben is down. No matter what comes up, he’s down for the cause, down to try it, down to start, right now. 

Sam Altman also recognized the value of this. He recently wrote an essay about Greg, his partner in building OpenAI (the most valuable startup in the past 10 years). 

Here’s what he said about Greg:

1/ Greg commits quickly & fully to things. 

When Sam pitched him on OpenAI, they drove home to san francisco an hour away. For the first 30 minutes he asked him a bunch of questions, then halfway thru declared “I’m in” and spent the last 30 minutes starting the job. 

2/ Greg was a brilliant coder (former CTO of stripe) but also took on all the non technical grunt work. Like getting meals for people, cleaning up , ordering supplies.

In short, Greg is down as hell. 

Ben is the same way. Quick to commit (down to do it). And willing to do whatever it takes to win (down for the cause). ‍

Ben’s first big job was at Fan Duel (back when Fan Duel was one of the rocketship companies). And when one of the founders wanted to leave to start a new company, he picked Ben to start it with him.

Why pick Ben? He was just a mid level employee. 25 years old. Not much experience. Not a coder. Not an epic sales guy… but the founder of fan duel knew what you need in a partner. But he’s just down. That’s why the Fan Duel founder picked him out of everyone else in the company to start something new. 

When I met Ben, he had a SaaS business doing ~$1M a year of profit. But he was bored. I told him I had a random side project idea, and asked if he was down to help me do it.

It was a half-baked plan. There was no guarantee. In fact, the only guarantee was that he’d initially be making less than he was currently making… But it was interesting, and I was interesting - so he decided on the spot: “yea, I’m down” 

I asked him if he needed to sleep on it, and he replied “huh? sorry I wasn’t listening, I just went to GoDaddy buying the domain so I can setup the site tonight”. Being down gives you an incredible bias for action. 

You might think that’s foolish. Why agree to things so quickly? Shouldn’t you think things through? It may sound like you just want someone agreeable. 

It’s like two people trying to jump from one cliff of a mountain to another. In moments like that, it’s not about who has stronger quads. It’s about who’s able to mentally commit to the jump. 

People who are down have very simple filters for action:

Does this sound interesting?

Do I like this person?

Can I be useful here? 

Does anything smell fishy?

OK, I’m down. 

It’s their lack of over thinking that makes them great adventure partners.

Even if they miss something 1 out of 10 times, they move 10x faster than over-thinkers, and so they get 10 times more shots on goal.

Being down drives action, but also decreases fear, doubt, and judgment.

You need someone who’s down for off-the-beaten-path ideas.

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia weren’t coders. They weren’t growth hackers. But they were down. When they needed cash - Brian had the idea to turn their apartment into an “air bed and breakfast”. You need someone who’s down to even float this idea, let alone pull it off. 

Same with Uber. When Travis & Garrett had the idea, they needed someone down to run a weird black car, off-market taxi service. So he tweeted out:

And who answered this billion dollar booty call? Ryan Graves. A guy with a modest background, he wasn’t a tech genius, or polished CEO. But he was down. Ready to start yesterday:

New ideas are also uncertain. The odds of success seem slim. You need a partner who won’t flinch at uncertainty. Their flinching is contagious. Someone who flinches at uncertainty will gravitate towards conservative, safe, proven paths (and there’s very little upside in these paths).

These things aren’t said out loud, which is what makes them so dangerous. Imagine having a friend who’s very conservative and religious. You pre-filter what you’re willing to bring them, because you know how they’ll react. When your partner isn’t down, you pre-filter all the high upside paths out before they even see the light of day. 

Nearly every great business pivots at some point. Instagram started as a location app. Slack was a multiplayer game. Twitter was a podcasting app. 

Rarely do you just “have an idea” and, welp, we nailed it, first try. You typically end up pivoting some (or all) parts of your business. The product, the market, the price point, the marketing strategy…it’s all just a giant guess up front.

Everyone knows the word ‘pivot’ but you don’t know it until you’ve felt it. It’s hard to describe the whiplash you get when you’re in day 458 of your startup and you suddenly say “shit. we were wrong. Everything we’ve said the past year and a half is wrong. We gotta change this. This is wrong..oh and we still don’t know what’s right. The name? It’s changing. The plan? Changing.

You can only pull off that type of mid-air U-Turn if your partner is down. Weak stomachs can’t handle the sudden shifts. And almost every success story takes at least 1 big mid air shift.

The good news is, once you realize you want someone who’s down, it’s easy to spot it. 

Here’s a fun experiment: close your eyes, and try to name 5 things in your room that are red. 

…Pretty hard right?

Now let me give you 10 seconds to look for red things…Go.. 

You probably can find 5 red things easily.

Because there’s a part of our brain called the Reticular Activating System that brings our awareness to anything we choose. The famous phrase ‘what you seek, you shall find’. And once you start looking for people who are down, you’ll see them just as easily as you saw the red objects in your room.

You can get away with 90% of life with someone who’s not down. Because most things are safe, predictable, and figured-out.

But for all the great adventures in life: Travelling, starting businesses, making art, having kids– these are acts that require daily leaps of faith. So for life’s great adventures, pick someone who’s down.