On Promance.
How professional bromances boost your career and company.
There’s a point in your career when ideas or flashy fundraises stop being the reason you stay somewhere.
It’s the people.
The ones who make you laugh between (and during) meetings.
The ones who finish your sentences.
The ones that stay with you at night when you’re onto something critical that needs to be tackled before the next day.
You don’t plan these relationships, they just click. And once they do, they change everything: your motivation, your standards, your output.
Call it what it is, a promance.
That mix of friendship, trust, and professional admiration that makes work feel less like work.
And it might be the most underrated growth hack in your career.
I’ve met a few people like that.
Some were the reason I stayed longer in jobs I should’ve left.
Others became lifelong collaborators.
One became the godfather of my daughter.
There are too many friends from my career to name them all, but I’m grateful for every one of them.
Working with them never needed kickoffs, sync rituals, or crazy 8s.
We just jammed. And built.
It felt right, natural and smooth. Like we shared the same brain.
When everything just clicks and you know that together, you’ll do wonders.
Of course, we argued more than necessary. But we still shipped.
And what came out of those partnerships became products that reached millions.
Even now, almost a decade later, when we work together, it still feels like a cheat code.
People who witnessed it from the outside were stunned by how fluid and powerful it was
It made us realize what we had — what we still have — is rare.
And it made me want to write this piece.
An ode to my promances. To my friends.
It’s hard to quantify chemistry, but investors try.
A study of 101 failed startups found that 23% failed because they didn’t have the right team, making poor team composition the third most common cause of failure, ahead of running out of cash.
Track record matters. But have you heard of fit.
Bad fit kills companies.
With my latest project, Offmarket, I use AI for structure and speed, but some things can’t be automated.
Gauging taste, and especially fit, still requires human intuition.
That’s why I spend real time with both founders and designers, to feel the chemistry.
That fit saves everyone countless hours and makes hiring dramatically faster.
Looking back, most of my career choices weren’t shaped by job titles or paychecks (actually didn’t get any in some).
They were shaped by who I’d get to build with.
I can tell within five minutes if I could work with someone for years.
You just know.
That human denominator, shared taste, tempo, and humor, matters infinitely more than mission statements or technical skills.
Skills can be taught.
Chemistry can’t.
If it’s not there on day one, it might never be.
The older you get, the less shiny objects impress you.
At 25, you chase logos and hype.
At 35, you chase fit.
Because you realize success isn’t about joining the right company.
It’s about joining the right people.
Reid Hoffman echoed it:
If you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose to a team.
Because a great promance multiplies outcomes.
You move faster. You dare more. You recover quicker.
And when things get rough, which they always do, you push harder, not because you’re scared of failing, but because you don’t want to let the other person down.
Even freelancers and solo founders can find it.
You don’t need a cofounder to have a promance.
Seth Godin calls it “finding the others”, the small circle that gets what you’re trying to do and keeps you accountable.
Maybe it’s a DM thread with two friends sharing mockups and rejections.
Maybe it’s a late-night Figma jam that keeps you sane.
It’s still your tribe.
I often grab breakfasts and lunchs in Paris with my tribe once in a while, even though we don’t work together these days.
Those are the people who make you sharper.
Who challenge your taste, refine your ideas, and remind you why you build in the first place.
You can fake motivation for a quarter.
You can’t fake chemistry.
If you’re a founder and notice exceptional bonds forming inside your team, don’t try to control them, or worse, split them apart.
Nurture them. Encourage them.
Your company’s trajectory will depend on those relationships more than you think.
Worst case, your company fails, but at least it created lifelong friendships along the way.
Find the people who argue with you because they care.
Who ship alongside you because they believe.
They’ll carry you through pivots, fundraising winters, and cover you when needed.
If you’re an IC or freelancer, seek your circle.
The industry glorifies lone geniuses, but the truth is: even the best work is born out of duos, crews, or cliques.
One great promance can open ten doors and keep you from burning out along the way.
The best career insurance isn’t a perfect résumé.
It’s people who’d vouch for you, build with you, and text you “let’s start something” five years later.
At the end of every success story, there’s always that same sentence hiding between the lines:
We built it together.
So next time you meet someone who makes you better, lean in.
That might be your next cofounder.
Or your lifelong best friend.
Julien.
Quick note: you might have noticed that The Playbook now ships bi-weekly on Sundays. Thanks for being a reader 🫰