Wences Casares and Micky Malka discuss how entrepreneurs need strong conviction to pursue bold ideas, but successful partnerships require leaving ego behind. They swapped leadership roles to build mutual trust, finding that when neither partner cares who gets credit, collaboration runs smoother.
Chapters
But I think that the formula for us is the ego. We have a lot of ego from the door out when we are doing businesses. But when we're together, there's nothing like that. We leave it at the door.
I still remember the shock I left being the CEO and I came back and Mickey was the CEO. But all it took, it was a phone call to understand why it was the best decision decision and never doubting that it was done in the best interest of our company. And it's a tricky thing because I believe that to be an entrepreneur, you need to have a high ego or at least very strong conviction about what you think, that the world is going about your own abilities. So it would be very hard to be an entrepreneur with low ego. I don't know if that's possible. So like Miggi says, from the door outwards, you need to have a very, very high, strong ego, strong conviction. But between the partners, I think that the low ego requirement is almost. A good partnership cannot work without that. And it means not only a funny situation like this, but in many other situations, not needing to take the merit for the things that you think you deserve, whether you think you deserve them or not, to be fine with the other partners taking the credit. Sometimes you see partnership when one of the two partners is okay not taking the credit and the other one needs the credit. That can work. I think it's healthier when neither of the partners really cares who takes that as long as the partnership is successful. We were 27 at the time. And things become a lot more clear with. With time and with perspective. But I don't think we had it that clear at the time. But looking back, I think we are convinced that's a very important element.
