Twins who run a business show what it’s like to work together

• Insider spoke to five sets of twin founders to find out what makes them tick.
• The twins say that dividing tasks and constant communication has helped them grow.
• Some like to market their “twins,” while others fear it looks like a gimmick.

Working in a family business is very common: In the US, family businesses generate half of the country’s gross national product.

Starting a business with your partner or sibling can be rewarding and stressful, but what about a business run by one of the closest and rarest family pairs, twins?

It’s special, says London-based Oliver Kent-Braham, who started insurance unicorn Marshmallow with his twin Alexander and friend David Goethe. It started in a gym cafe and is now worth a billion dollars.

Marshmallow

“As long as you have the twins there, you know, if he’s OK, I’m OK,” Oliver told Insider. “Everything that he finds interesting, I find interesting.”

Insider spoke to twin founders in the retail, wholesale, cosmetics and insurance sectors to find out how they work together, how they leverage the “twin effect” in marketing and what the future holds for their businesses.

A balancing act

Nichelle Nichols, 37, was born moments before her sister Nicole. Since then, she has taken on the “big sister” role in their relationship, she said.

At Guilty Grape, a lifestyle and wine company they founded in Dallas, that includes leading operations, campaigns and wine research, while Nicole deals with the back end, working on spreadsheets and focusing on their bottom line.

Joshua Galloway

The twins, who live together and often say the same thing, believe that their strengths are balanced against each other.

“I’m very visual,” Nicole said. “I have to see a map and a plan, so when I think she wants to be too dangerous, I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, pull back a little.’

It’s a similar formula for 22-year-old twins Luke and Owen Bookmaster, who started selling Pizza Base to businesses through their UK-based company Doughboys in early 2020 and earned $400,000 in their first year. Luke handles sales and marketing, while Owen focuses on operations and finance.

Milena Ugrinova

“We can look at each other’s strengths and weaknesses and both of us can step into where we want to run the company,” Owen said.

Torsten Piper, an academic at UNC Charlotte, told Insider that twins can be useful in different roles in business.

“You may be tempted not to challenge your twin, and you may be tolerating actions and decisions that you think are wrong, so it’s important to have a system or personal process that validates or corrects this,” Piper says.

A close bond

Oliver, the Marshmallow founder, has taken interview assignments without his brother, but it’s rare for the pair to be apart, an insider said. “I think maybe 2 or 3% of the days in my life I don’t see Alexander,” Oliver said.

The twins played doubles tennis for Great Britain as teenagers, and Oliver admits there was often conflict: “When you’re 14, there’s a lot of arguments on the W Court.

Now, Oliver lives a 10-minute walk from Alexander and his girlfriend.

Their closeness helps them succeed as part of a small fraction of businesses run by CEOs. But joining at the hip isn’t the only way to grow a successful business together.

Luke and Owen were initially reluctant to join forces in business, worried that it might damage their relationship. The twins both dropped out of school at 16 and had separate careers before deciding to work together, citing a lack of power.

Forty-year-old Feven and Helena Johannes’ Los Angeles-based 2•4•1 Cosmetics launched in 2020 when it was featured on Oprah Winfrey’s Favorite Things list.

They were born in a refugee camp in Sudan after their parents left Eritrea.

Their father encouraged them to create their own identity from a young age. “As twins grow up, they constantly compare you,” Helena Feven added, adding that her father thought it was “unhealthy” to treat twins.

Feven and Helena John

Between the twins that Insider spoke to, they seem to have spent a lot of time attending different colleges — even racking up $300 in phone bills the first month apart.

Helena says she finds the 2•4•1 makeup more “boring,” while Feven says she keeps her “head in the clouds,” but says the combination works.

Feven and Helena live with their respective partners but work together at Helena’s house.

Deirdre and Helen O’Neill, 37-year-old twins, run an in-house hormone and fertility testing group called Fertility Health, Cork Ireland. Starting the business They’ve been trying to establish their own identities for years, even though they’re happy to switch classes at school and skip each other’s classes.

Helen and Deirdre O’Neill

“We’ve spent our lives looking the same and fighting so hard to be individuals that we’ve been categorized as twins,” Deid said. This includes dressing differently and pursuing a different career path.

Deirdre becomes an M&A lawyer, while Helen’s interest in being a twin leads her into genetics.

Their unique experiences proved a winning combination for their genetics business.

Helen says having her twin with her felt like a comfort blanket as they prepared for the grant: “I could just focus on what I was good at, and I could focus on everything that Dire was good at, which was venture capital. “

Marketing ‘The Twin of Everything’

Only 1.6 million sets of twins are born each year in the world, according to the journal Human Republic, so naturally twins are memorable.

They remove the double take that inevitably applies to marketing.

A study by the Family Business Institute found that companies that promote themselves as a family earn more trust and are better at attracting talent.

Philip Phan, a business professor at Johns Hopkins University who has spent years researching family businesses, told Insider that even in businesses where twins don’t intentionally use their ties to market, this comes naturally.

“And the brand value associated with that is family value,” Phan said. “It’s an extreme version of a family business.”

Family businesses naturally care about their community, Fan said, because their identity is often tied to the community in which they operate.

The Nichols sisters’ best marketing comes from appearing together at events like wine shows, where people often instinctively gravitate to them.

“We call it the Twin Effect. I guess people are very fond of all the ‘twins,'” Nichelle said.

Nichelle and Nicole Nichols.

A similar aspect can also have negative sides. Nichelle joked that at events she would find herself picking up conversations someone had started with Nicole and vice versa.

And with companies rarely relying on the personality of their founders, being a twin can also be a frustrating burden. Luke and Owen said some investors and clients may view the twins as “traditional” founders, so they may trust them.

Helen said not even one investor from Hertility had invested in her siblings.

Oliver says that Gemini is not very effective at marketing insurance, and he and Alexander try to avoid pigeonholed as “black founders” or Twins.

Feven and Helena added: “It’s important that people see us as individuals and not as some weird freak show.

Feven and Helena John

Fighting division

Sooner or later, all business partners experience stress. Phan said the conflict between the twins could be more destructive to the business than the average sibling partnership, given their code.

“Also, because they are so emotionally and cognitively connected, I think that decisions that affect twin families, in addition to regular family members, can cause significant emotional differences.” “So if there is a conflict, the conflict could be worse.”

On the other hand, the emotional bond between twins means that they are “less likely to conflict on average.”

Owen Bookmaster says any tension between him and his brother is brief. “When we argue or argue, it doesn’t last long anyway.

“But I think that generally lasts longer and goes with non-twin partners.”

Luke and Owen Buckmaster

Things can get even trickier if a third party comes into the equation. Some twins say future partners try to look for areas of disagreement to force a compromise between them, a common problem for UNC’s Charlotte Piper sibling founders.

“Before, we were in business with a third person, and the integration was not 100%, and I feel that we are going faster together with my sister,” Helena said. “Disagreements can arise, and once we decide on something, we do it quickly.”

As long as we’re together, it’s great.

All of the twins said that their businesses changed the nature of their relationship.

“I would say our conversation is more casual, like 70% of what we talk about is work, but the intimacy hasn’t changed,” says Marshmallow’s Oliver.

They all told Insider that they are lucky to have found success with their other half.

“I’m so happy to be on this trip with my sister,” Helena said. “I feel like I was born with the best business partner.”

Piper “planting trees” or “selling ice in the Arctic Circle” twins can be very successful if they work together.

Helen and Deirdre O’Neill

Helen from Hertility added, “I think I feel closer to Deirdre than ever, building something that we both really care about.

“I really wonder what we would have done — how our relationship would have continued as twins — if one of us had been on this road alone, because being a founder is a very lonely journey.”