co-founder

“We generally say that equity should be split more or less equally between co-founders. That doesn't necessarily mean exactly equally, But we generally find that where there is an equity split that's very mismatched, you know, one founder has 90% and the other …”

“It's such a better idea for founders to just try and if they don't have a co-founder to just do it themselves. It will be very hard, but it is the damage that can be done by tacking on a co-founder that you haven't worked with, that you don't know very well, t…”

“Rarely. I'm trying to think of an example, and off the top of my head, I can't think of an example. Wow. Of two people who were introduced, or sort of bolted on to each other at the last minute, ever working. I'm sure there are examples of it has, having work,…”

“If you're not willing to give someone, your co-founder, you know, like an equal share of the equity I think that should make you think hard about whether or not you want them as a co-founder.”

“Well, there, there's two types of, ah, co-founder conflicts, resolvable and unresolvable. Ah, I'd say, If it starts very early, usually it's unresolvable and somebody's gonna have to leave. If it starts late, usually there's a reason and you can fix it.”

“Find a co-founder with complementary skills, but the same moral compass as you.”

“If you and your co-founders are having a really hard time coming to a consensus about stock allocation, there may be underlying trust or commitment issues with the team, so you want to pay close attention to that.”

“It's usually better to have somewhat equal shares, not, not, but not completely equal, and if one person has 51% and the other person has 49%, then they can control.”

“I think that you know, something that we're kind of lucky about that I think is very, well, exactly to your point, I think he's definitely present in sort of the most successful co-founding relationships that I've seen is some degree of sort of dispassion in d…”

“I think if you're building a biotech company, you obviously have to build a scientific team and then you'll end up with PhDs in your team, but you can be a co-founder without a PhD.”

“Actually our co-founders still live together.”

“Getting a co-founder is like getting married to someone, and it's probably like even way more intense, and then you, and you don't have usually sex to relieve the tension, or fix a bunch of things, or smooth things over.”

“Ask him, okay, what's the test that would prove that the direction we're going in right now is a good one, and what is the time period that we can all agree with to go after that, and then bam, we're running an experiment now. If we don't make it, we'll switch…”

“I would argue that in a lot of the teams that we fund, two, three, four founders, They're not all equally passionate about the problem, right?”

“A lot of people want to ask us advice about co-founder stuff, but what they want to, what they want is us to agree that they were right and their co-founder's wrong.”

“I actually see that most Problems between co-founders, the root cause isn't whatever went wrong, or whatever they're debating. It's actually their style of dealing with their frustration.”

“I'd start by encouraging you to not think of finding ideas and co-founders as two separate tasks. It's hard to think up good ideas yourself. Also, your ideas will start out being vague and fuzzy, more like a hunch or an impulse than a clearly formed idea, and …”

“I love to engage and like lean in and talk through conflict, but it's just as likely the person that I'm working with wants to avoid conflict or wants to take time to process conflict or doesn't process conflict through conversation. And like, I have to look a…”

“This is why we like teams who known each other for at least a little bit and have some kind of work or personal relationship. Because I always say that like, when you have some kind of non, you know, if you have some kind of base relationship that you might wa…”

“You have to learn how to fight and maybe fights the wrong word, how to disagree. It's like You have to learn how to pull your punches and have a disagreement that's a real disagreement and actually release the pressure of the disagreement in a way that doesn't…”

“And so my tactical advice on this would be set up regular one-on-ones with your co-founder, and that may sound a little formal, but something I did with my startups is I would just put time on the calendar at the end of every month where we would just go for a…”

“In particular, if you're building a software or technology company, there really should be at least one co-founder who's technical and can program.”

“I think again, in 90% of the cases, you should really spend all of your efforts on trying to find a great co-founder to start a company with.”

“Here's one tactic I also give people, which is once you made the ask, if that person really says that they're not available, is ask them who would they pick to be their co-founder if they were starting a company, and ask for an introduction to that person.”

“And you really can't do that alone. Like you need someone else there who at a basic level can just get more work done with you, right? Two people is more working hours per day than one, but also having a good co-founder improves the quality of your work. So if…”

“The number one blocker I see to why people Say they're having a hard time finding a co-founder is that they already assume that everybody they know is not available.”

“You will have to decide on what the equity split will be, and my default advice here would be you should split the equity equally between yourselves, and the reason is if this startup is successful, you will end up working on it for the next 10 years or more, …”

“And in my experience for people who are your age, who have like already graduated college or working at some company, that's the biggest limiting factor in practice for them actually doing a company is like they and their co-founder both need to be willing to …”