I learned a valuable lesson dealing with these two and that is to not get involved with friends in business because you are going to lose one of them.

I mean, it can work but often times I would agree with you here. I know of a few people who work with their friends and it isn't an issue, but it's a bit different as they're co-workers and no one is in a superior position. I think I only know one person with that situation, but they've been running their business for over 10 years alongside two friends and they haven't had an issue come up yet. Hopefully they won't.

I can definitely see this just turning into a shit covered train wreck though more often than not. I mean, hell, I won't even loan most of my friends money because I've seen my mom get burned bad by loaning out money to friends and family. (She got into massive debt and never came out because of it. My cousin did a fraudulent check of 40k and instead of charging her, she just let it go because my aunt said she would pay her back since her kid was the one who fucked her over. Who would have guessed, the snobby troglodyte never paid my mom back. There were several other times she loaned money out that never got given back. I think she's probably still 70-80k in debt.)

So, If I give someone money I treat it as a gift. If they insist on saying they'll pay me back, I just tell them they can get me a drink or some food next time we hang out. Makes it much easier where I don't have to worry about shoving my chocolate starfish in someones mouth over $20.