I spent years building an agency alongside a business partner, so I know the thing the solo-founder advice never mentions. The hardest relationship in your company can be the one right at the top, between the two people who own it.
Elizabeth and Anthony Heaney run the most extreme version of that. They built Squint Creative, a CGI and fake-out-of-home studio in Belfast, together, as a married couple. On the Exit Ready podcast they were honest about what that actually takes, and the lessons apply to anyone running an agency with a co-founder.
A partner is an asset, if the roles are clear
The best reason to build with a co-founder is that one person rarely has the whole skill set. Anthony came from a special-effects background, so the technical craft was his. Elizabeth runs the other half of the business. They are not two people doing the same job. They are two halves of one job.
That was true of my own partnership. We were very different in our skill sets, one of us strong on client service, the other on strategy, and we could dovetail on the projects that needed both while trusting the other to own their lane. A partnership works when each person has a clear area they own. It struggles when both try to own everything.
A shared goal is the other half of it. As Elizabeth put it, the business is a goal the two of them work on constantly, and that pulls them together even when the work is hard.
The hard part: critique that lands personally
Here is the bit nobody warns you about, and Elizabeth named it perfectly.
“If a client gives me critique, I’d be amicable. If Anthony gives me critique, it’s a completely different story. It’s hard not to take it as your husband thinking your work is not good, instead of your business partner thinking something could be done better.”
Every co-founder relationship has a version of this, and it does not require marriage. When the person giving you feedback is also the person you share the company, and sometimes your life, with, it is easy to hear a note on the work as a judgement on you. That is how good partnerships curdle. The skill is learning to receive a business partner’s critique as exactly that, a partner trying to make the work better, and to give it the same way.
The thing that holds it together is the shared goal underneath. Elizabeth was clear that the business, for all the friction it can cause, makes the relationship stronger because they are pulling in the same direction. A co-founder partnership without a genuinely shared goal is just two people arguing about the same company.
The smart way they made the leap
The other lesson worth stealing is how they de-risked the jump from employment to running Squint full-time. They did not both leap at once.
“We wanted to build up enough cash flow that when Anthony went first, we knew there was enough coming in to cover his role. Then I made the jump once cash flow had grown again. I don’t think we ever would have made the jump without that safety net.”
That is a staged, sequenced exit. One partner goes first, only once the business reliably covers their salary, then the second follows when it can carry them too. They built Squint on the side for two to three years to get there, taking client calls from an airport cafe on their lunch breaks, even signing their biggest retainer client from that cafe. The grind is real, but the discipline is the lesson. They let the cash flow prove itself before they removed the safety net, rather than betting the house on hope.
What to take from this
If you run your agency with a co-founder, or you are thinking about taking one on, three things from Squint are worth holding onto.
Give each partner a lane they genuinely own, so you are two halves of one business rather than two people circling the same decisions. Build the muscle of separating the work from the person, so a partner’s critique lands as a contribution and not an insult, because that single skill is what keeps the partnership alive over years. And make sure the goal underneath is genuinely shared, because that is the thing that turns the inevitable friction into something that strengthens the business instead of breaking it.
A good co-founder is one of the biggest advantages an agency can have. It just asks more of the relationship than anyone tells you going in.
Go deeper: Hear the full conversation with Elizabeth and Anthony on Exit Ready episode 004, then read how to build a leadership team in your agency and how to scale a creative agency from zero.