To put a project with a friend is to take the risk of a double commitment: that of work and that of the link. Tensions arise quickly when the creation dynamics upset established relational habits. However, several stories show that the confrontation, far from breaking the attachments, can be used to clarify them. What projects reveal – divergent ambition, need for recognition, poorly expressed expectations – does not necessarily destroy friendship. Provided you are formulated, assumed, and put to work.
Behind the complementarity, the need for clarity
In 2017, Alice Zagury and Osama Ammar pilot together The Family, a structure that deeply marked the French tech ecosystem. The agreement between the two founders, both strategic and personal, is one of the engines of the project. But in 2021, the separation was brutal, public, legally conflictual. However, Alice Zagury refuses to make it a personal betrayal. In several speeches, she explains that she was confronted with deep disalion, not on ambition, but on the principles of governance.
This dissociation between professional disagreement and emotional bond did not prevent the tension, but it allowed the structure to survive the burst. The teams were taken up, the mission clarified, and the inheritance digested. For her, this rupture has highlighted a central element: complementarity is not enough. You need an explicit pact on how to decide together, to talk to each other in disagreement, to set limits. Friendship, if it exists, is not a guarantee – it is a material to be used with precision.
A structuring disagreement, not destructive
At Cheek Magazine, a media founded by three friends in 2013, differences arrived quickly after the first years of publication. Editorial objectives, development strategy, financial balance: visions are moving away. One of the co -founders leaves the project, in a tense context but without human rupture. Several months later, the three women continue to see each other regularly. They recognize having learned to express their disagreements without loading them with excessive emotion.
What has preserved the link is not the absence of conflict, but the possibility of expressing it in a clear framework. The media, for its part, continues its development in a light configuration, with a redesigned governance. This departure, far from having been a defeat, allowed everyone to find a fairer posture, without denying the common history. The test served as a catalyst to redefine the contours of the personal relationship, apart from the constraints of the project.
Reveal tempo differences
When the founders of the startup ticket for change decide to launch the entrepreneurial program of the same name, they share a strong vision: democratizing professional engagement. But very quickly, the personal dynamics collide at the rhythm of the project. Some want to accelerate, raise funds, quickly extend the model. Others wish to preserve an educational anchor, slower, more anchored in experimentation.
The tension rises, until it requires external mediation. Rather than bursting, the collective agrees to redraw governance. Codirection is implemented, the roles are redefined, and the autonomy areas are clarified. This reconfiguration allows the project to hold over time, but above all it avoids the confusion between divergence of vision and questioning of the relationship. The founding members speak of it as a “useful crisis”, which has strengthened mutual trust while accepting a share of structural incompatibility.
Learn to say things
Make.org’s experience, a citizen mobilization platform, shows another facet of the subject. In the start -up phase, several members of the founding team are linked by ancient personal affinities. The transition from the idea to legal structuring and then to operational execution reveals tensions: some people feel put aside, others do not find their place in the emerging organization chart.
The click occurs during an internal seminar, during which a session is devoted to the “perceived contribution” of each. The risky exercise allows several members to express their discomfort – sometimes for the first time. This moment of rocking does not erase frustrations, but it makes it possible to avoid destructive unspoken. Some leave the operational, others change their role. All remain involved in the project, to various degrees. The team discovers that the personal link is not damaged when faced – but when denied.
When failure strengthens the link
In the associative universe, the case of Variousidays is regularly cited. The association, founded by Mounira Hamdi and Anthony Babkine, experienced a strong media exhibition from its beginnings. The rate of growth, new responsibilities, rapid structuring have tested their relational balance. But faced with these pressures, they chose to be accompanied in pairing coaching, not because of a conflict, but to anticipate wear. This preventive approach made it possible to install regular speaking times, to adjust the distribution of tasks and to preserve transparency in disagreements.
This permanent vigilance has become a pillar of their governance. The personal link is maintained, not because it is a priority on the project, but because it conditions its solidity. Far from the fused models, this duo embodies a structured, equipped friendship, capable of absorbing tension peaks without emotional skid.
Make room for ambivalence without trying to solve it
At Murfy, an appliance repair company, the two co -founders have gone through a period of prolonged disagreement on the territorial development strategy. One was favorable to rapid expansion, the other to a local consolidation. None has left the project, but the working relationship has changed: more distance, less spontaneity, areas of redefined cooperation. This new, more compartmentalized operation has not started their personal link. He moved it. The exchange spaces have become more ritualized, more formal decisions. It is not the return to a perfect agreement, but a new form of collaboration, more respectful of the differences in tempo.
These adjustments, often invisible from the outside, allow certain pairs to last without diluting. The project ceases to be a total personal identification. It becomes a shared terrain, which sometimes coexist incompatible logics. It is this coexistence which, when it is assumed without willingness to fusion permanent, makes it possible to maintain a living relationship, even crossing tensions. The link is no longer to be protected at all costs, but to live with lucidity.
