LawDepot’s Joint Venture Agreement template works for both contractual business relationships and general partnerships.
Contractual joint ventures
With a contractual joint venture, each member keeps separate accounting records and receives their set portion of profits and losses. The parties may also choose to limit their individual liabilities if a dispute occurs. These ventures often last for a single project or a specific duration of time.
For example, two tech companies may work together to research and develop a new mobile app. The two companies have different skill sets and talent pools to draw from, allowing them each to contribute to the project separately.
When ready, they combine their contributions into a complete package, dissolve their venture, and proceed to market and sell the product independently from one another. So, while the members are collaborators in development, they are competitors in the same marketplace.
General partnership joint ventures
With a general partnership joint venture, each member shares the profits, losses, and liabilities of the business. In this case, the partners are equally responsible for the partnership and actions taken by members on behalf of the partnership. Unlike contractual ventures, general partnership ventures often commit to working for long-term profitability.
For example, a hair salon may partner with a spa service to create a new business entity with a view to profit. Together they rent out a commercial space, create new business signage, and combine their client base. Although the hairstylists and aestheticians have separate skill sets, they work together to represent the same self-care and salon business.
Unlike the two tech companies in the first example, these businesses are not direct competitors but have a mutually beneficial purpose. That being said, any losses in the hair salon would be offset by profits in the spa service and vice versa.