Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield took a $5 ice-cream-making correspondence course in 1977, and opened a scoop shop in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont the next year[1]. By 2000, Ben & Jerry's was sold to Unilever for $326 million[2]. The company they built started with the simplest possible org chart: 2 partners, 2 sets of jobs.

Ben handled the business side. Marketing, sales, operations, customer-facing decisions. Jerry handled the product side. Flavors, recipes, kitchen quality. Each played to his strengths. They didn't hire a CMO or a COO for years; they were both.

That's the basic structure of a partnership: 2 or more owners share full responsibility for the business and divide the work based on their respective strengths and interests. There's no boss above either partner. They check each other.

How partnerships actually divide work

In a 2-person partnership, the most common splits:

  • Builder vs. seller. One person makes the product, the other sells it. Ben & Jerry's. Steve Wozniak (engineer) and Steve Jobs (sales/vision) at early stages of Apple[3].
  • Inside vs. outside. One person runs the team and the books (the Operations leader), the other handles customers, partners, and press (the Sales leader).
  • Specialist + specialist. Each partner brings a different skill (a doctor + a lawyer co-founding a healthcare consultancy, for example).

Larger partnerships (3+ partners) typically formalize the split with written role assignments because informal handshake roles break down past 3 people.

Sole proprietors play every role

A sole proprietor doesn't get to split the work. There's only one of them. So they play every role themselves, especially in the first 1–2 years:

  • Chief Executive Officer (CEO): set the vision, decide what to build, decide what to drop.
  • Marketer: make the website, run social media, write the emails.
  • Product developer: build or improve the actual product.
  • Financial manager: track money in and money out, file taxes.
  • Operations manager: handle suppliers, fulfillment, customer service.

Most solo founders eventually outsource pieces (an accountant for taxes, a freelancer for design, an assistant for inbox triage). Until they hit enough revenue to justify spending, they wear every hat. That's why solo-founder businesses tend to grow slowly: there's only so much one person can do.

Quick recap

  • Sole proprietors handle every business function themselves, often including CEO, marketer, product, finance, and operations.
  • Partners share full responsibility and split work based on strengths and interests.
  • Common partnership splits: builder + seller, inside + outside, specialist + specialist.
  • Larger partnerships (3+) usually require formal written role assignments.

Try this week

If you've ever sold something (a service, a product on Depop, a YouTube channel), list the roles you played to get one customer or one viewer. You probably wore at least 4 hats. That list is the entire scope of what a sole proprietor does. Pick the 1 you hate most: that's the first job you'd hire someone for if you scaled up.

References

  1. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield completed a $5 Penn State correspondence course on ice cream making in 1977 before founding Ben & Jerry's in 1978. Data as of 1977 (course) / 1978 (founding). Source: Ben & Jerry's company history. benjerry.com/about-us
  2. Unilever's offer of $43.60 per share for all of Ben & Jerry's 8.4 million outstanding shares, valuing the transaction at ~$326 million taking into account net cash and option proceeds. Data as of April 12, 2000 announcement. Source: Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc. press release, filed as an exhibit to SEC Form SC TO-C, SEC EDGAR. sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/768384/0000950157-00-000165.txt
  3. Steve Wozniak designed Apple's early hardware, including the Apple I and Apple II; Steve Jobs focused on business strategy, product vision, and commercial direction. Source: Britannica, "Stephen Gary Wozniak." britannica.com/biography/Stephen-Gary-Wozniak

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