The Friend that was
The year was 2009. My son was born, and I got into a business partnership with a friend.
Not just any friend. Someone I considered a brother.
We had the kind of friendship that doesn’t follow a script. Despite a significant age gap between us, we found ourselves in the wee hours of the morning in front of Smokey and Bunty (a once popular spot in our Capital); at clubs, at parties, talking about Star Wars, movies, rock music and the particular kind of restlessness that creative people carry when they haven’t yet found the right outlet for it.
He was the lead singer of his small rock band. I was a self-taught designer and builder, quietly accumulating skills I didn’t yet know what to do with. We shared something that felt rare in Trinidad: the belief that we could actually make something worth making.
He drove the car for my wedding.
The Partnership
When my son was born, he sat me down with the kind of seriousness that felt like it mattered. You need financial stability now, he said. Something real. Something that could fund the future. The short films, the movies, the creative life we both wanted.
He pitched a 50/50 partnership that would be the foundation that made all of it possible.
I believed him. Completely.
The business made sense. He came from sales, automotive parts and accessories, knew the industry, and knew the people. I had the digital capabilities to build something neither of us could afford to hire out. Together, we were going to take the local auto market online, properly, for the first time in Trinidad.
In our haste to “change Trinidad”, we knew enough to know we needed help, so we hired a developer. He pulled out when our vision outgrew what he was willing to deliver.
So I did what I always do when a door closes. I taught myself to walk through the wall instead.
Upgrading
Over the next few months, while caring for my one-and-a-half-year-old son during the day, I spent my evenings and nights at the office studying. Books, physical and digital. Online resources. Hours of reading, coding, practising, failing, trying again. My coding knowledge at the time was basic HTML at best, but I was determined to upgrade my expertise and deliver what we had envisioned together.
I built the website myself. It wasn’t everything we had dreamed of, but it was real, it was ours, it worked, and it was a start.
I still have that website from 2011.
Unceremoniously Out
Two and a half years. That’s what I gave that partnership. I handled every aspect of the marketing and digital development. I came up with the name of the venture. My branding and positioning eventually landed us a contract with one of the country’s top auto dealers. Two people. No major staff. Just the work, and the belief that we were building something that mattered.
Then the money started coming in.
And what came after, I could not anticipate, but it was so cliché looking back now.
One evening during one of our casual after-work conversations by the bar where we did most of our best thinking, a beer in his hand and a Malt in mine, he suggested with the casual air of a man settling a minor tab, that I should begin charging him for my services. It was a staggering proposition: the architect was being asked to bill for the foundation he had already poured with his own blood and sweat. After two and a half years of building his dream alongside my own.
Then came the office refurbishment and the promise of an upgrade. Could I move my computers and furniture temporarily while they worked on the space?
The call to come back never came.
The cut didn’t feel like a cut at first.
It took me nearly two months to fully understand what was happening. I had no binding contract, because I had trusted him the way you trust a brother. No formal agreement, because that had felt like an insult to what we were building together.
By the time I understood it clearly, he had already moved on. And I was standing outside a business I had helped build, with nothing to show for it except the skills I had taught myself along the way.
The Shift
I spent a few months sitting with that. Feeling the weight of it. Processing what it meant to pour everything into something and walk away empty-handed.
But somewhere in that stillness, something shifted.
I looked at what I actually had. Not what I had lost, but what remained. My significantly upgraded, self-taught web development skills. A fully functioning product-based website that I had built from scratch. A clearer understanding of the digital landscape than almost anyone around me. And for the first time in years, a completely clean slate.
I didn’t need a partner to validate the vision. I didn’t need a team, a developer, or anyone’s permission to build. The greatest lesson that partnership taught me wasn’t about business. God knows I’m still no good at “business”.
It was about waiting. I had spent years assuming that this is how it’s done, that you needed the right people in the right roles before you could begin. What I discovered, painfully and then gratefully, was that learning was always faster than waiting.
A year and a half later, I launched TriniSpace. Trinidad’s first all-classifieds platform built from the ground up.
Not because the conditions were perfect. Not because I had funding or a team or a certified plan. But because I finally understood that I was the one I had been waiting for.
Greed kills innovation.
But sometimes, it also sets the right people free.
