My first foray into entrepreneurial life occurred in the late '80s, when I moved to the hills of central Pennsylvania (Happy Valley to the locals) and with about a half-dozen others, launched a weekly newspaper.

It was exhilarating. It grew into an award-winner within the first year. It was also a headache. We were all shareholders in the company -- friendly for the most part. But all those partners meant a lot of bureaucratic garbage. Everything had to be decided by committee. You know the expression: "A camel is a horse designed by a committee?" I learned how true that is. Eventually, we spent more time on our issues than the business at hand.

I headed back to New York in 1991. I wasn't really tired of building the paper, but I was terribly homesick. At the same time, I wasn't sorry to end the strain of having all those partners. I promised myself that if I ever went into business again, I would go it alone -- and certainly not far from New York. (The pizza and the Chinese food are too good to make exile a viable option).

True to my word, I launched my own company, StaffWriters Plus as a solo venture in 1995. Soon however, I met a group of people with whom I felt a strong bond. They were launching a Web development and marketing firm called Invision LLC at the same time I was getting StaffWriters off the ground. And before I knew it, I had partners. Only this time, it was different.

We first met when Tyler Roye, a principal in the firm, began following me around at trade shows and asking me lots of questions about my company. He knew about me from a column I write for Newsday, a New York-area paper. I guess he figured I would be a good person to know because of my media contacts. It was more than that, though. As a longtime entrepreneur, he saw potential in my business -- a staffing agency for editors and writers -- that I, as a newcomer to entrepreneurship, was apparently missing. He also saw how we could work together. Finally, at his insistence, I met him and all his partners at a diner. Over cheeseburgers and fries, we quickly concluded that this was the start of a beautiful relationship.

Like my company at the time, Invision was still home-based. The partners had all grown up in the same neighborhood. Their company evolved when they started a stock club for the hell of it, and the enormous potential of the Internet dawned on them. Shortly after that, they formed Invision. They are now Long Island's largest Internet service provider.

Shortly after that fateful cheeseburger dinner, we decided to partner strategically. Nothing formal -- but real nonetheless. We all moved our businesses out of our homes and into shared office space. Then Invision designed and built my Web site. I did some writing in exchange. And it has been that way ever since. I pick up costs on a project here, they provide resources there. We've actually created a new venture together, LIJobs.com, which we call "the Motherboard of all Tech Job Sites," without a shred of hyperbole, of course. It's a great marriage of our respective skills and taps a very hot area of the economy.

We've done it all on a handshake. Every few months or so, we sit down and reconcile the shared expenses so we don't lose sight of who's spending what. It's always a cordial, painless experience. Just last week, we all moved together into larger offices.

The relationship has been an eye-opener for me. I realize that as our companies grow and become more complex, we may drift apart. Obviously, if LIJobs.com really takes off and starts making, say, $1 million or more in revenues a year, we'll have to formalize things. Until now, though, I've experienced something remarkable: a spontaneous business collaboration without the impediment of contracts and paperwork. I'm convinced that had they proposed a formal partnership with all the requisite documentation four years ago, I would have been turned off. Instead of the great relationship we have, we would have long ago gone our separate ways. What a loss it would have been.

George Giokas is the president and CEO of StaffWriters Plus, a specialty agency that places writers in temporary and permanent positions with corporate and other employers. It also provides editorial consulting work. His database includes 2,500 writers and editors specializing in more than 60 categories. His Web site is located at www.staffwriters.com, and you can E-mail him at george@staffwriters.com.