Share by EmailIf there is one thing I have succeeded with in my own companies, it was the founder and co-founder relationship.
Here is what I’ve found from my own experiences, and others. I wanted to note, this should not be considered 100% accurate, as I believe everyone’s situation is different…but I hope this helps anyone else out there:
Co-founders are not hired
That’s right, co-founders are not hired. I wanted to write this because I’m always seeing the question “where can I find a co-founder?”…and I’m also looking at some of the Tech Stars Incubators, like the Gazelle Lab (we beta tested them 
they are cool ) that require you to have a co-founder before you can even enter their program.
If we actually stop to think about what a co-founder is…it’s someone who founds the idea at the same time, with the founder. Why? Because someone else coming in 6 months – 12 months down the road…the risk is uneven. This is going to lead to problems right off the bat…and is usually the cause for most founder/co-founder break-ups.
The Ideal Founder/Co-Founder
I actually read this statement in one of YCombinator’s forums…and I couldn’t agree more: the ideal founder/co-founder are two partners that have previously worked together, and founded the company together, at the same time. Many believe the best founder and co-founder relationships are pre-existing relationships for the fact of how the idea is born: it’s born because you’re brainstorming (a creative process) with someone you trust.
The Creative Process of Ideas Born
Most ideas go through a creative process, we learned about this from someone named Nathan who is USF’s first creative in residence…in the country. They gathered up a large group of Entrepreneurs, that had no companies yet, and let the brainstorming begin. It was amazing.
Relating it back to a personal experience, this process is the exact same way how my co-founder and I founded Synergy Hub. It starts with the talk of dreams, the talk of leaving the nine to five. Then someone says something like “wouldn’t it be cool if….”. Then the other person chimes in “Yeah! Then what if….”, before you know it, they’re excited….and an idea has been born.
The Development of the Idea
At this point, and as we witnessed in the Gazelle Lab, the idea is built off of each other’s input: this is who we call the founder and co-founder. Then, the idea begins to get narrowed down into a set path. This is where the founder and co-founder decide to either:
- Divert and execute the idea
- Or it remains a dream
In our own case, it happened exactly like that as well. I went home and diverted, and executed. I bought the domain, figured out how it would make money, and had financial projections within a few hours. My co-founder will tell you he woke up at 1am to about 10 text messages explaining how will we do this, how much money it would make, a round about of what it would cost, and what it was called. He still has those text messages almost 2 years later.
From there, it was game on.
No One Else can Be a Co-Founder
Often we’ll try to bring someone else in on equity to make a missing piece of the puzzle. If it’s a big piece and we don’t have money, we’ll automatically try to call them a co-founder. This usually doesn’t work (but hats off to the people who do make it work), unfortunate there is nothing in between a co-founder and a key employee.
The real founder and co-founder usually bear the sole responsibility of making the business work…and hiring vendors & key employees to get the business built. Both founder and co-founder will usually put in a ton of time, and money.
Making it Work
If you were fortunate enough to found your company with another founder, it’s tough. But two heads are often better than one they say, and two “friends and families” to lean on is better than one.
If it helps anyone, myself and my co-founder often switched roles. One of us would take on the time commitment and manage the vendors, the other would take on the money commitment. Usually we would think of this person as an investor, put we have to keep in mind someone who is with you from day one, that is there to pay the small bills like the logo, filings, website design, etc takes very little money. It can easily be afforded by your average everyday co-founder working a normal job.
If you both sit down and say “Okay, we’re going to do this. We both need to put in an extra 2 hours a day”. One of you can pick up an odd job for 2 hours a day, the other can manage it 2 hours a day.
Just some ideas for how the right founder and co-founder can survive start-up death valley.
