
Cofounder management - akharris
http://www.aaronkharris.com/cofounder-management
======
jtbigwoo
High-achievers (and most people) are trained to simply put in more hours to
get past problems. If I'm not doing well in a class, I study more or do extra
credit work. If I'm not selling, I can make a hundred more calls. If I make a
short-sighted technical decision, I can stay up all night and refactor my way
out of it.

Part of the reason why management is so tough is that you can't always solve
problems by simply working more. When it comes to team dynamics, a lot depends
on catching problems in the moment and communicating clearly the first time.
You can't just brute-force your way through problems like you can in most
other areas. It takes intuition and understanding that is innate to a few
folks and earned through experience by everybody else.

Think about this situation from the article: "We did, however, realize (a bit
later than we should have) that disappearing from a tiny office too frequently
during the day was a bad idea and hurt morale for the rest of the company."
There was no way for them to fix this by working harder, they had to find an
intuitive sense for how much time away from the office was too much.

Managing people is a fundamental skill for founders and one of the areas where
intense effort often doesn't make a difference at all.

~~~
doctorpangloss
> You can't just brute-force your way through problems like you can in most
> other areas. It takes intuition and understanding that is innate to a few
> folks and earned through experience by everybody else.

You absolutely can brute force with management. You can always pay people
more, or give up some of your equity to someone who will work harder.

> "We did, however, realize (a bit later than we should have) that
> disappearing from a tiny office too frequently during the day was a bad idea
> and hurt morale for the rest of the company." There was no way for them to
> fix this by working harder.

Being present longer and taking fewer breaks is superficially working harder.
More abstractly, you can work harder until you make redundant people who
complain about coffee breaks, if you so choose.

~~~
amirmc
> "You absolutely can brute force with management. You can always pay people
> more, or give up some of your equity to someone who will work harder."

That's not remotely 'brute forcing management'. That's just giving people
different financial incentives. If you had a management problem _before_
handing over cash/equity, you're still going to have one _after_.

------
aberoham
My cofounder is my brother and communication is far and away one of our
biggest challenges. In our case the style familiarity and family connections
actually compound the delicacy of how we go about growing and changing our
routines. To say I've learned more about myself since cofounding a company
than in any prior endeavor would be an understatement, and I've done some
pretty whacky things in the past in an effort to test my limits. (reality tv,
expat, changed my name, etc) Were we both not at points in our lives where we
are receptive and careful with criticism there's no way we have made it this
far. One of our clutch mentors ends up being another brother who knows us both
very, very well. I can't imagine how we'd get through tough times without that
well known second opinion, or how impossibly impenetrable a cofounder
relationship is to outsiders who haven't done it before. Hat tip to Mr. Harris
for calling this out!

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krschultz
_Cofounders rarely have experience managing anyone or anything. They 're
learning at the same time as running a startup. There are a lot of good ways
to manage, but they take time to learn and practice._

Boy is that scary.

~~~
angersock
Yep. And that's why, if it isn't your first rodeo, you can end up in a weird
headspace as an early employee, because cofounders may act like they know a
lot of things they don't (including how to lead), and you know that they are
still learning.

You kind of have to top from bottom sometimes.

~~~
monknomo
I feel like topping from the bottom is an underappreciated skillset that can
be really helpful for an employee and their boss. Done right, the employee
looks almost telepathic and prescient. Done wrong and the employee looks like
a jerk, but ymmv...

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pskittle
I was helping a close friend grow and build out his startup idea. i've known
him for a while and we're still pretty tight. However along the way i realized
that i wasn't into it as much as he was . the problem we were solving didn't
bother me at a cellular level. Even though ive known him for a while it took
me quite a bit of time to be upfront about it (i didn't wanto hurt his
feelings) but as soon as we had a talk about it it was cool.

------
7Figures2Commas
> Cofounders rarely have experience managing anyone or anything.

This might be true if you're talking about a startup run by a bunch of
20-somethings with no experience. These are certainly en vogue in Silicon
Valley today, but hardly represent all startups.

> Cofounders often think they don't need management because they're all on the
> same team, working towards the same goals.

This is a sign of an inexperienced, naive founder. No entrepreneur worth
teaming up with believes management is unnecessary.

> Startups are high pressure, and pressure makes people make bad decisions and
> lose their tempers.

Notwithstanding the fact that if your startup is a pressure cooker, you're
doing it wrong, it's dangerous to believe that all people react the same way
to pressure and stress. Pressure and stress lead _some_ people to anger and
poor decision making. Start a company with these people at your own risk.

> Deciding to start a company from scratch with the goal of building a billion
> dollar business takes ego.

Most successful businesses aren't started by people who are focused on
building a billion-dollar company. If that's your overriding goal, clashing
egos will hardly be your biggest problem.

Incidentally, while it obviously wasn't the intent, this post demonstrates
some of the advantages of founding a company solo. It worked for Sam Walton,
Ralph Lauren, Richard Branson, Sara Blakely, Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar,
Michael Dell, Ross Perot and countless others.

Investors like YC don't look on solo founders favorably and have helped create
a narrative that has deterred some entrepreneurs from taking this path (and
created the inane "seeking co-founder" environment), but entrepreneurs should
understand that investors have motives for wanting multiple founders that are
not necessarily aligned with their interests.

For seed stage investors particularly, multiple founders is a derisking
mechanism. For instance, there are a lot of smart, talented folks out there,
but it's still hard to find exceptional founders capable of competently
wearing multiple hats. On the flip side, hiring exceptional employees is
expensive. A company with just $120,000 in funding can't hire a good
developer, product manager _and_ sales or bizdev person. This creates
significant risks for seed stage investors. The solution: seek companies with
multiple founders who split key roles. Since founders at this stage
essentially work for ramen and equity, having multiple founders is like a
cheap insurance policy for resource risk.

~~~
jndsn402
Agreed, much of the startup advice from YC and other outlets is geared toward
20-somethings, and thus may come across as simplistic to people who have:

a) worked in a professional setting (e.g. a large corporation) b) managed
other people c) been married d) been alive since before 1980

~~~
leesalminen
I'm not convinced that ones age has anything to do with it. Personally, I
think it has to do with maturity.

A person is simply the culmination of ones experiences, training and beliefs.
For some, it takes 40 years to build those things and for others it takes 20
years.

Although age and maturity usually correlate directly, it's not always true.
We've all met people in their 40s that act like they're 18, and 18 (ok, maybe
25) year olds that act like they're 40.

Disclaimer: I'm in my 20s

~~~
msandford
I used to think that way too when I was in my 20s. High achiever, very smart.
Now I'm in my 30s and I can say that my opinion has changed. Not hugely so,
but definitely some.

The older you get the more your perception of time changes. I think this is
part of the reason that there are so few 20-something leaders of huge
companies. Partly it takes time to prove yourself to enough people to get a
shot. Partly because it takes a long time to be patient enough to where you
can be effective at the job.

~~~
nostrademons
I dunno. I'm 33. My opinion has changed, and then it changed again.

I think I'm definitely not the same person now as I was at 24, or even 29. The
thing is, I wasn't the same person at 29 as I was at 24 either, and I doubt
I'll be the same person at 40. In other words, the process of change and
growth doesn't stop - ever. Probably that's the biggest lesson I learned in my
30s.

I think the biggest mistake many 30 and 40-somethings make is to fit
everything into an overarching narrative of growth and maturation. "I was
young and foolish then, now I'm older and wiser." Because the narrative
doesn't actually stop - we are _still_ young and foolish, hopefully - and
trying to fit yourself to it just ensures that you remain stagnant at wherever
you were at 30. Instead of a narrative of growth and experience, it's really
one of _adaptation_ , of recognizing progressively more subtle distinctions in
the environment and changing yourself in response to them. And in that
narrative, it makes sense to listen to everybody, even to young people, so you
can pick out the parts of their experience that are new and unfamiliar to you.

~~~
msandford
Yeah, I'm not saying that I'm "older and wiser" at all. Older yes. Wiser
maybe. More risk averse for sure, and a lot of people equate that with wisdom.
I don't, but many do.

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flurie
One could change some of the specifics of the language (less talk about
management, change "cofounder" to "spouse"), and this could be information on
how to have a successful marriage.

In addition, an important piece of advice on marriage that almost certainly
applies to cofounders as well is not to contradict your partner or have
disagreements in public.

~~~
angersock
What's always great fun is when the cofounders are new, _and_ are married!

~~~
yaddayadda
What's even more fun is when they get a divorce and remain cofounders.

It gets weird and it gets awkward! Where I'm at, there's clearly a 'his team'
and 'her team'.

~~~
angersock
Oy vey. If you're in Texas, shoot me an email--we may be hiring soon.

~~~
yaddayadda
Thank you!

Unfortunately, I'm not in Texas and just refinanced my house, so won't be
moving anytime soon.

------
amirmc
One of the critical things about management (in my view) comes down to
communication. If communication is open, honest and frequent, then mistakes or
roadbumps become easier to deal with. If communication is lacking, vague or
insincere then it begins to erode trust and people withdraw.

Learning to communicate (inc. listening) is a valuable skill that is often
neglected.

~~~
martinkl
A tricky thing about communication is that sometimes it's really hard to
convey why you believe something. You have some intuition that you should do A
not B, but you can't put a finger on why. In order to resolve conflicts, you
need to find a way of reasoning about intuition.

So I agree that open and honest communication is super important. I just
wanted to note that difficulties in communication may happen even with the
best intentions.

~~~
amirmc
I completely agree and I didn't mean to imply that communication difficulties
only occur due to bad intentions. My point is more that _lack_ of
communication can directly lead to negative effects.

Even when there are open/honest comms, there's still the additional effort
needed to _understand_ what's being said (which I think is what you're
referring to). To reach that level, you must first have been able to listen.
Not every decision can be made using hard facts but it should be possible to
explore the drivers behind viewpoints - assuming of course, that you trust the
people you're discussing with. Taken to an extreme, it's almost like a form of
counselling.

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balls187
Apologies for being cynical but this is a nothing article that offers no real
advice.

Open communication isn't just about checking in frequently, and talking
doesn't guarantee that each person will feel listened to.

Communication is much more than just setting aside time to talk.

I would have much preferred if the author gave specific strategies for
listening and being more effective at communication rather than high level
generic advice.

My advice for co-founders that are serious about being better at
communication: hire a marriage and/or relationship counselor to help you with
your communication.

~~~
amirmc
I think it's valuable to at least raise an issue even if you don't have the
perfect set of advice to deal with it. Sharing such experiences can help
others recognise their own problems. IMHO launching into ways to fix this
issue would have taken away from the post by being overly prescriptive about
solutions.

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jacquesm
The voting in this thread is HN un-worthy.

