How can I communicate effectively with my business partner?

You should stop working with her.

Working with non-tech founders can sometimes be a pain because they feel the tech part is "easy". Nowadays whenever some of my friends suggest I join them on a startup and work on building a MVP, website etc.. I make them do something first (ie. get a customer commitment, research etc)... and often they'd just disappear which is fine with me.

I suggest you give her a meaningful task and tell her that you're going to stop doing any work until she proves she can lift her own weight.

F**king ironies of life. Here I am, a some-tech but mostly biz founder who got an MVP built, launched, finding it arduous searching for team members.

OP: drop your friend while it's early and you can part on good terms. She's not interested (except maybe to brag that she also has a startup), unavailable ("other work commitments"), and probably not even competent to create/grow a company if it came down to it. And maybe you should repost with your email, skills, industries of interest, so you can find more serious people.

Drop her like it's hot.

"When people show you who they are. Believe them." M.Angelo

It is ironic. I ran into this for over a year with finding a solid technical co-founder. My experience has been, many highly experienced individuals (devs) are as loyal as the next highest paying opportunity and many will back burner your project based on what's making them the most money today.

Even when offered a combo of cash

and equity. I provided detailed

wireframes, marketing research,

customer feedback from focus groups, psd mockups, marketing

strategy and some tech exp, and

still the stronger tech co-founders

with great skills, meant well, but

were mostly unavailable to meet

milestones. I lost almost 7 months

bw 2 different exp tech people from

very well known backgrounds that believed in the project but just couldn't make time bw all of the

jobs being offered to them daily.

Blessing & a curse I guess. Many

exp tech co-founders can now make more being an employee than in a startup unless you're the next fb

and the likelyhood is slim and not

apparent in the stages when you

need their greatest commitment. This observation is applicable to both tech, semi-tech & non technicals with solid exp in their respective fields. Bottom line. Don't waste time. Respect their position and do it yourself. There are plenty of resources for hire to get you off the ground. Maybe later you will find

her useful as a resource to answer

a question here and there but this is

entrepreneurship. If you believe in it,

just do it yourself. Now.

Go do your own thing, if your last venture didn't get anywhere don't stop and don't make that a reason to put up with her b/s, great friendships don't always translate in to great working relationships.