A good partnership or having co-founders is identified as a key to success. It’s not to say that sole founds are not successful but have a partner in toe increases your likelihood to succeed. At the face of it, there are obvious pros and cons to get into a partnership. Entrepreneurial journey can get lonely, and a co-founder with a complementary skill-set could be a great companion. You can benefit from a different perspective, a “sounding-board”, a new voice, and additional resource to make progress.
The obvious pool of candidates for a co-founder was immediate family at one point in time. Later, people from one’s network became the go-to option. Today, you can post on job sites such as LinkedIn and Indeed or look for one on sites such as FounderDating, Co-founder Lab, Founder2be and more. To think of it, it is like dating. I spend more hours with my business partner than my husband. When you can find a date online, then why not a co-founder? Seems doable, right? The only catch is, you can break up and go on your own separate way while dating, but a break-up with a co-founder can be a lot messier. Most of the sites do a great job in educating founders on an approach to find a co-founder and ways to mitigate risks. Having a partners’ agreement, delineation of roles and responsibilities, decision making hierarchy, equity split and exit plans have become a norm. In addition, I suggest the below before deciding on a co-founder:
1. Values and objectives:
It sounds boring to talk about values and not tangibles such as hard skills. In fact, most early stage companies do not have published set of values or principals. So, why is talking about values so important? It helps you to understand how he/she makes decisions and trade-offs. Decision making is not black and white. A business owner makes many decisions each day to shape the company in the long run. For example, it might be important for you to buy from local suppliers whereas your co-founder might view it as another business decision. Now, do not expect your co-founder to agree with everything. Write down all your values and distill them to top 3-5. Be ready to give-in and know your “non-negotiables”. Depending on how early you are in the life-cycle, it might be a good exercise for you and your co-founder (as a part of interviewing process?!?).
If you are starting the business together with a partner, be sure to understand their motivation and objectives. For example, in one of my previous entrepreneurial ventures, my co-founder was driven by top-line growth and I, on the other hand wanted to focus on brand identity and market-size. It was the age-old conundrum – go broad or go deep, and we knew we couldn’t do both. While, healthy amount of decision-making friction is good for the company, no amount of business analyses can answer questions such as these. It comes down to conviction. It affected who we hired, the trade-offs we made and what we would become. One day, I realized, I was no longer passionate about what we were doing, and I stepped out. This brings me to the most important thing…
2. Passion and Purpose
Anyone who ever started a business knows that, you pivot. You always do not end up going where to you intended to go in the first place. During these pivotal moments, purpose and passion guide you. For example, you are motivated to stop infant mortality, and your partner is motivated by building the best possible technology to detect birth defects. Now after a couple of iterations, you might realize that Technology to detect birth defects might not be the way to go and the partnership fizzles. Alignment around purpose and passion for the same is of utmost importance.
3. Demonstrated pace and sense of Urgency.
One of you left a well-paying job, the other is still working. One of you has a family to support and the other is single. One of you is interested in applying for accelerators by next quarter, the other thinks there’s time. None of these are deal breakers, but important to understand and align.
4. Follow the FRONT rule
There are many things to do but founders usually have limited time, resources and cash. One of the exercises I’d like to do is to discuss how co-founders would utilize what they have. Though this is not the first thing you’ll have to find out about your co-founder, having a pulse for what he/she thinks can be very helpful
- Favors:
- Resources
- Outsource
- Not a priority
- Time
Having a good pulse for when and for what you would use the above will save your from unnecessary frustration in the long run. This will also ground you in reality and how far you can stretch your FRONT reserves.
5. Agree on an accountability and feedback mechanism
Before you have employees, before you have a board and investors. You have each other. Make the best use of this time, to build a rapport to hold each other accountable. You can do it in person (at a pre-decided time) or use anyone of the several online tools or meeting techniques. Find time to appreciate each other’s wins and provide constructive feedback!
Whichever way you choose your co-founder, in addition to the partner agreements, do not forget to discuss the above. Hope this is helpful! I’d love to hear your views. Connect with me to share your story!
Thanks for reading!