According to the Tory Burch Foundation, nowadays 65% of high-potential startups fail due to issues among the co-founding team. That being said, finding the right co-founder for the startup you’ve created or are planning to create is a task that should be carefully considered and is crucial for the health and smooth operation of the company as a whole.
Why have a co-founder at all?
There are three main reasons for wanting to find a co-founder, instead of embarking on your startup journey alone:
- Productivity: Having someone to discuss ideas with and share the workload leads to increased productivity, especially if it’s someone with complementary skills who brings different ways of thinking, enriching brainstorming sessions and problem-solving moments.
- Emotional support: Building a startup involves intense moments of achievement, but also a lot of stress, and having someone to share and overcome those moments with, to keep both motivated, is very valuable.
- Following the pattern of the most successful startups: Although names like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates became highly known for being CEOs of their respective companies, they all had co-founders who are directly related to the success of their startups.
What to look for in a co-founder?
When it comes to finding the right co-founder for your startup, several aspects need to be considered:
- Personality: The relationship between co-founders requires trust and mutual understanding, so it’s imperative to find someone you can trust, preferably someone you already know to some extent and who has a compatible personality with yours. Additionally, you should understand how this person deals with stress and conflict resolution, as these will be recurring situations in a startup environment.
- Values and goals: It’s essential that the co-founder shares your values and goals, both in terms of the company’s culture and future ambitions. You should be in agreement on questions such as: What is the startup’s mission? Where do we see ourselves in 2 years? And in 10 years? What kind of culture do we want to create within this company?
- Work ethic: Look for someone who is willing to work hard to achieve the company’s goals and whose work ethic aligns with yours. If possible, choose someone you’ve enjoyed working with in the past, who creates a pleasant and productive work environment.
- Skills: Your co-founder should possess the necessary skills to be an asset to the company, whether they are technical, managerial, or leadership skills. Above all, it’s essential that these skills complement yours so that you can make the most of this competent and diverse partnership. Finally, they should demonstrate adaptability and a willingness to learn continuously, which is very valuable in the context of a startup, where initially, the entire team performs a wide variety of tasks.
Where to look for a co-founder?
Where to find potential co-founders who have the characteristics mentioned in the previous section?
- Start with people you already know:
- Think about all the people you’ve enjoyed working with and highlight those with whom you’ve felt the strongest professional connection, who also possess the skills mentioned above;
- Also consider people with whom you’ve collaborated on academic projects, as those can provide a good simulation to understand the work ethic of the person in question.
- Meet people who share your interests and way of thinking:
- Participate, for example, in volunteering activities, competitions, workshops, and other group events, where you’ll likely meet people with similar interests and, perhaps, the same goals and ambitions.
Based on this spectrum of people and what you’re looking for in a co-founder, create an ordered list of candidates to contact and present them your offer.
Examples of well-known cases:
Many globally known companies, with immense success, were based on a team of co-founders who met through one of the methods mentioned above, for example:
- College classmates:
- Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google) met at Stanford University where they were both studying. They ended up working together on a project called “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine” which served as the foundation for the Google search engine.
- Other companies that emerged from partnerships between college classmates were: HP (Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard) and Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes), among others.
- Work colleagues:
- Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim met while working at PayPal, from where they left to create their own business. This partnership led to the creation of YouTube, the world’s largest video platform.
- Partnerships that also came from previous coworkers’ relationships: Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce (founders of Intel, former employees of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory), Jan Koum and Brian Acton (founders of WhatsApp, former employees of Yahoo), among others.
- Clubs and similar interests:
- Phil Knight was an athlete on the University of Oregon’s track and field team, coached by Bill Bowerman. It was based on their mutual interest in running shoes that the company Blue Ribbon Sports was founded, which later became Nike.
- Although Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (two of the three founders of Apple) met when the first interned at HP, where Wozniak worked, it was a strong common interest in electronics that further potentiated this partnership. They both actively participated in a local organization called the “Homebrew Computer Club” where the first prototype of the “Apple I” was later demonstrated.
How to maintain a healthy and lasting relationship?
First and foremost, it’s crucial to go through a period of trial work with the aim of understanding if this partnership is viable and meets both parties’ expectations. At the end of this period, an honest conversation should take place between the co-founders to decide if this team has the necessary conditions to fulfill the potential that the respective startup promises.
That said, ensuring a healthy and lasting relationship between co-founders is very important to guarantee the smooth operation of the startup. To achieve this, the three most determining factors are as follows:
- Communication: Regular meetings, being honest and open to constructive criticism, being tolerant of each other’s actions, being understanding, and always willing to solve conflicts with respect;
- Friendship: Developing (or strengthening) a friendship with the co-founder, getting to know him really well, and supporting each other when necessary;
- Power and role distribution: This distribution should be done fairly so that the entire team feels valued for the work they do. Each individual should be well aware of their role and position in the company (e.g., who is the CEO?), to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings later on. The same applies to the distribution of company’s ownership, which should be based on criteria agreed upon by both parties involved.
References: