Since the introduction of open innovation (OI), both firms and academics have widely acknowledged the potential of unlocking large firms’ innovation potential through interactions with external parties, such as young ventures. These asymmetric partnerships are prone to several problems related to communication, roles and responsibilities, cultural differences, and operational issues, for which solutions and best practices have been proposed. However, all these solutions focus on the partnership itself; hence, on the “Get & Manage (GM)” stages. Unfortunately, the processes leading to a partnership; i.e., the “Want & Find (WF)” stages before the partnership, have largely been overlooked. The central thesis of this manuscript is that solutions that are implemented in the early “WF” stages have a positive impact on the outcomes of an asymmetric large firm — young venture partnership. We will show that attention to set-up and communication efforts in these early stages is needed, and discuss how our detailed explanations of such fruitful solutions contribute to the extant literature on asymmetric OI collaborations.