Ask HN: How do I know if I have the right co-founder? - montgomm
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leesalminen
Listen to your gut.

I started my business with 2 partners. One of them I trust completely, even
with my life. I had a negative gut feeling about the other since day 1.

The latter is the one we had to let go, and it got really really nasty.

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Axsuul
You don't until you go through hard times with someone.

Good times don't tend to expose the relationship well.

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meticulouschris
I've been researching this a lot lately. So this could be from other posts on
HN, other forums, or blog posts... most of this is probably not my original
thoughts.

First the right co-founder would be a lot like you. Compatible communication
styles and temperament. If one of you likes to "call it like it is" and the
other is more gentle, things won't go well. You don't have to be identical,
but close enough to not waste time fixing your relationship every day.

Second, the right co-founder will be the opposite of you. In terms of skills,
opposites are good. You're good at development? You need them to be great at
something entirely different.

If you met your best friend because you worked side-by-side doing the same job
and do everything together, probably not a good cofounder. But if you have a
former colleague that you worked with, you got along great, but you were in
sales and he was a developer -- that might be a match made in heaven.

I like to think of it like a marriage. My wife doesn't mind doing the things I
hate (cook, clean, etc) and I love doing the things she hates doing (going to
work, doing finances, etc). We communicate well, get along great, and the
responsibilities are easy to split.

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jtfairbank
You don't. Founding a company will be one of the hardest things either of you
ever does. It's almost impossible to know beforehand how people will react to
extreme stress, sleep deprivation, large amounts of money, etc...

You can certainly do your best to learn about each other and extrapolate what
that means for a day to day working relationship, and for the good and bad
times. I'd highly recommend working on a side-project together, or one of you
hiring the other as a contractor for 1-3 months to work on the main product
(pre-incorporation) with the understanding that everything will even out at
incorporation. Equal (or reasonable) equity split, and the person paying the
other for contracting work will get a reimbursement as part of the
incorporation expenses.

To further reduce your risk, you absolutely need vesting and triggers. Based
on my experience, the standard 4 year vesting / 1 year cliff is not enough for
founders. I'd explore more long term options, such as 6 year vesting / 2 year
cliff, or the 4/1 that only starts after reaching a significant revenue /
fundraising milestone. The latter of 1 mil ARR or raising over 1 mil in
funding. Obviously you should both have the same terms here.

You may also want to consider having only one of you on the board (so that in
the worst case you can fire a cofounder). This should probably be the CEO.
Also, CTOs are usually the first/only devs so you may want to consider setting
a 6 month done-or-out milestone for product dev. This could be applied to
other roles (CEO- fundraising, Sales- hitting early adopter/traction
milestone), but I haven't seen that done in practice yet.

The worst case for you is that it doesn't work out in the early stages. This
doesn't have to be a bad split, nor kill the startup. Sometimes people go in
with good intentions, find out that it's not for them, and leave on good
terms. But if they do leave, on good or bad terms, before the company is
stable then you don't want them to take a large portion of the equity.

I strongly believe that founder equity is to compensate performance, not
opportunity cost. That's why they need to have such a large portion- the risk
of not performing is so great since the bar for a founder is so high, so if
they do perform they need a large reward. If founders are concerned about
opportunity costs of giving up a large salary, and need equity to make up for
it, they probably aren't really ready to make the jump to a startup.

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chrisked
I guess time and your gut will tell, but don't waste valuable time to find
out. Don't postpone any tough talks to later. Spend a lot of time together in
business maybe even private. Traveling with someone to a foreign country for
me is always a good indicator. You'll see how someone behaves in a different
cultural setting, how they deal with unknowns and eventually you feel if you
can work hard together for the next 5+ years ;)

