The Secret to Successfully Mixing Business With Friendship

It’s rare for a startup to see astonishing success, and even rarer for its co-founders to sustain a close friendship as the business grows. But Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur have mastered the balance of business and personal. The pair launched Of a Kind, a small e-commerce website for limited-edition fashion collections, in 2010. By 2015, it had grown into a thriving business and was acquired by Bed Bath and Beyond. That’s when Cerulo and Mazur realized that their longstanding friendship and business partnership could benefit from some professional help. They began seeing a management coach who helped them navigate the tricky task of staying friends while doing good work together, and call the decision “huge.”