It’s one thing to have a successful business relationship with your business partner, another if it’s someone from your own family, and pretty extreme when it’s your twin brother. Katie Pattullo talks to Ben Finn, founder with his twin brother Jonathan, of the highly successful music software company Sibelius.

There are endless lists of high profile twins ranging from the infamous, mythical founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, to the present day Scottish singing duo Craig and Charlie Reid of The Proclaimers. But bar the publishing magnate Barclay brothers, successful twins in business are pretty hard to come by.

Enter the Finn twins, Ben and Jonathan, creators of Sibelius a desktop music publishing program which allows composers to hear their compositions being played by an orchestra before physically having to invite the orchestra into the studio. It has subsequently been adopted by leading composers and musicians worldwide from Steve Reich to Ray Charles.

From an early age Ben and Jonathan had an intense interest in all things technological and would delight in ‘misleading’ others with their perceived telepathy. This involved dismantling a remote control car and working out that when you pressed a button it moved a little switch. The brothers would use playing cards and the electronics of the dismantled car, to send signals to each other and convince people they were telepathic.

As is the case with most twins Ben and Jonathan had grown up with similar interests and were both extremely talented in music and technology. With this in mind they had initially set upon the idea of inventing a music composing software package for their own use. Ben explains: “When we were at school we were taught to be composers which, in the eighties, was unusual and not part of the national curriculum. We’d also taught ourselves computer programming and had already programmed a few games – so it was a natural progression to think of combining music with technology.”
Following school, the brothers both attended university though Jonathan went to Oxford and Ben to Cambridge. It was while at university that they worked on the actual programming of their music software package. “When we started writing it we thought it would take two years but actually it took about seven years. The longer it took to develop the clearer it became that we would have to make something commercial out of it.”

When they were about half way through writing the program they started contacting computer companies and music publishers to see if they were interested in selling it. None of them seemed particularly interested so almost by default the Finn brothers decided to set up a business themselves.
Perhaps one of the critical reasons there are so few examples of a harmonious and successful twin relationships in the corporate world is essentially the fact that, and here’s the paradox, that they have so many characteristic similarities. To run a successful business, however, there are very different skills and talents required. It just wouldn’t work if both parties wanted to play a pivotal role as leader, or similarly were driven by being the product pioneer.

Fortunately, the Finn brothers came to an agreement early on in the process: Jonathan would be responsible for the technological side of the business and Ben would be overall chief executive with direct responsibility for sales and marketing. “In the first couple of years of the business and before we had our own offices and staff we were both dealing with most aspects of the business jointly. As we started employing more people it became obvious that we would have to divide up our roles, particularly as Jonathan was living in London and I was living in Cambridge. It meant our roles became much clearer.”

Two years ago the Finn brothers decided to hand over the reins of the company to Avid, a US technology company, after gradually reducing their involvement with the business prior to the sale.

But being inventors at heart, they are now in the midst of their ‘next big project’ – not music-related, but still using their technological experience. In its infancy, the twins are reluctant to divulge details but the odds are high they have the winning formula, despite or in spite of being twins, to make it work again – and they aren’t the type of people to gamble with their skills and creativity.