
Ask HN: What are your criteria for selecting cofounders? - deathWasp271
Currently, I&#x27;m a single founder with an idea for an initiative. It&#x27;s not exactly a startup yet but might become one in its later stages. On what basis should I select co-founders, and if I might need them?
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limist
Character (integrity, drive to learn & improve) and skills that you respect or
admire. Then shared values and life situation: the startup should be the #1
priority for everyone on the core (full-time) founding team. Missing any of
those requirements increases the risk of failure.

Unfortunately for those without a wide/deep network of college friends, former
colleagues, etc. it's hard to judge character and skills without a previous
friendship or shared work environment, etc. If you're forced to evaluate a
potential co-founder in the absence of shared history, work on something small
together for a few days/weeks and see how it goes.

Another thing to do in all cases is to discuss downside/failure scenarios
right up-front, and see if there's a sense of openness and fairness. Check out
the books _The Founder 's Dilemmas_ and _Slicing Pie_ for structuring the
conversations, as they give vital ideas and precedents around formalizing the
founders' relationships. It's much easier to chat about failure and equity
before real work starts, and I've seen many times that it flushes out
assumptions and behaviors that you won't want on your team (assuming you're
the reasonable and fair one :-).

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jedberg
Here's my best tip: Make sure they are in a similar life situation. ie.
Wealth, kids, family, etc.

If one of you has three years of life savings and one of you needs money in
three months, that will affect your decision making.

If one of you wants to take weekends off to go to the kid's soccer games and
the other one wants to go out and drink on Friday afternoon, you had better
figure that out ahead of time and make sure you're both ok with that.

~~~
shawn
Is it important for both people to sign a vesting schedule from day one?

This seems like a surprisingly common scenario: The initial agreement is a
50/50 split, and then a few months down the road one or both founders feel
that 50/50 is no longer fair. If a vesting schedule is signed, you never have
to think about this or revisit it.

The point of a one year cliff is that you can say "Ok" without worrying
whether the other person is ineffective. If they are, you part ways.

This usually kills the company, of course, but squabbling over scraps of
equity seems to do at least as much damage. Enough that YC wrote
[https://blog.ycombinator.com/splitting-equity-among-
founders...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/splitting-equity-among-founders/)
about it. And it seems especially dangerous if you can't both agree to sign
from day one, before doing any significant work.

But perhaps that's that's too inflexible. I don't know.

~~~
Jhsto
I guess even with equal ownership it would be beneficial to decide who has the
final say on things. "A pirate ship has to have a captain." Rather have the
business die because of bad choices than the inability to make choices.

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alain94040
Doers[1]. Aka, people who act. move mountains. get stuff done.

[1]
[https://medium.com/@alain94040/doers-b364a4d2de3f](https://medium.com/@alain94040/doers-b364a4d2de3f)

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daxfohl
Meta: is anybody else here thinking "what a strange question"? Is there some
kind of co-founder aisle in the bay area grocery stores or something?

~~~
wink
I don't think it's a strange question at all.

I have good friends who I love to spend time with, but I never want to work
with them.

I had colleagues in other teams I loved to work with, who I never wanted to
have in my team (e.g. development vs operations. Really cool for problem
solving and interacting on a project basis, but too different in daily
habits).

I had colleagues in my team I loved to work with daily, who I never want to
start a company with.

Even when you already know a lot about people that doesn't mean they'd be a
good fit for a cofounder. But then I've never started a startup, I'm happily
employed and don't plan on going back to be my own boss.

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thinkingkong
Ive gone through this a few times. The best approach I took was to look at
myself and assess my strengths and weaknesses. Knowing that made finding
people with other complimentary strengths easier, and also results in
(hopefully) a better product, solution or what have you.

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bobosha
Here is my list of 3 qualities:

1\. Emotional Maturity - startups are super stressful, you need someone who
can be a steady voice of reason.

2\. Relentless - someone who is stubborn and never gives up.

3\. Complementary - someone who can fill in the blanks vis-a-vis your skills
(tech/business/sales/..)

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nicodjimenez
Choose people you work well with, who just won't give up, and share similar
values. If one of you wants to build a long term company, and the other wants
to cash out as soon as possible and go work for Hooli that could become a
serious issue down the line.

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geetfun
It’s almost impossible to reduce the criteria in finding the right cofounder.
Likely the ideal candidate will also look at other person with an equally
critical eye as well. I’d say serendipity and chance occurrence that the
business is something you both want to work on and find regular intervals of
success are probably determinants in deciding (retrospectively) if the
cofounder was right.

------
danieltillett
You really need to know how they are going to hold up under adversity (you
will face adversity). I have always thought the idea of going on some sort of
difficult adventure (long trek through harsh terrain) is a good way to see how
they will hold up.

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kashkhan
Ability to sell. Sell product to customers. Sell company to investors. Sell
organization to potential hires.

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cheez
Complementary skillsets/interests.

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j45
Each co-founder relationship is different, but there may be some items below
of use to you.

1) Find someone who can be on the same wave length as you for 1-3 years, at
least in terms of what you both want, how hard you can work at it, etc. A co-
founder relationship is harder than marriage. A lot of it due to getting on
the same page, and staying on the same page for 3-5-8 years isn't always easy.
My marriage is much easier because of all I learnt about having and being the
best partner I can be and always improving.

2) Date before you go steady, before you get married. If you meet someone
interesting, try a practice project together. Too many hackathons are about
making a baby over a one night stand and putting on rose coloured glasses..
Still, would you open a bank account, move in with, and get married to someone
you speed dated over a weekend?

3) Focus on short-term and healthy partnerships on small projects at first.
They will become long term on their own.

4) If it's all going to hell, it's going to go to hell no matter what you do,
or don't have in writing.

5) Make sure your work ethic and philosophy is the same. Being effective is
critical as is delivering results, being responsive, available. A startup is a
baby. Don't feed it, it won't grow.

6) Don't make co-founders out of loneliness or to add people to the mix. The
potential 1+1 should always equal 11 with cofounders.

7) Success in startups (and business) is about discipline, execution, focus,
and doing what needs to be done, not just what's shiny or interesting. If the
average maturity of co-founders is not high or strong enough, it will be hard.

8) If your potential co-founder has shiny object ADD, take that into
consideration.

9) Hang out with people you can develop fierce trust and loyalty with. You can
go much faster, then.

10) Vesting for shares is good. It's OK to tie it to a Harvest timesheet in
the beginning. All shares are worthless unless anyways they make them
valuable.

11) If you have a business development (sales) co-founder, it's not unusual to
have their top line sales vest/convert to a certain percentage of equity. As a
technical founder, I know I can build and deliver. I expect the sales guy to
be able to deliver sales, or the only thing of value that's created (IP),
falls back to the people who built it.

12) Some people will say partnership is about leverage, ultimately. This is
true to some extent, however, I wonder if it should be about partners
leveraging and exploiting an opportunity, instead of each other.

13) Partnerships like marriage are not measured in the good times. They are
truly shown in challenging times. Being able to communicate in tough times is
really critical.

14) Despite the above, learning to work with others is an invaluable skill.
Just don't bank too much on others. You'll do good, and meet others who are
doing good. Ignore talkers, only pay attention to doers.

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thecolorblue
Someone who completes your...

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throwaway_fish
>> a single founder with an idea

You don't need a cofounder. You need to learn to program.

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greenyouse
I really liked this blog post from Leo Polovets for measuring the overall risk
of a startup.[0]

Maybe in the same vein you could do it for cofounders? De-risk yourself by
picking a cofounder that you know well and will be helpful. It's definitely
not perfect but maybe this will help...

If you pick someone that you know well, you'll be a better judge of whether
you'll have work conflicts later. I'm not a fan of working on a project
together to test your chemistry. It's still a big gamble if you do that.
People are too nice.

Your cofounder judgment ability:

\- random person

\- acquaintance

\- previous co-worker

\- friend

\- family

You could draw up the major roles that you'll need to take on for the early
stage part of the startup (UX, sales, engineering, design, marketing,
management, fund raising, etc.). When picking a partner try to optimize for
filling as many of the roles as possible. It helps if they have a different
background but I think proven skills are more important.

Cofounder skill balance:

\- they're me and we do all the same stuff

\- same skills but different background

\- they know some other skills but together there are still many gaps

\- together you cover most skill gaps and have different backgrounds

\- they know enough of what you don't that together you'll cover all the skill
gaps

From the roles you laid out, how much experience do they have with each? Add
up the points 1-5 for each job to get an idea of how likely they are to be
good at their tasks.

Cofounder job experience:

\- never done work like this before

\- worked a bit in the industry but not this role

\- worked in this role in a different industry

\- worked in this role in this industry

\- excelled previously working in this industry doing this job (really know
the ropes)

Take these three criteria and weight them properly for a clunky formula that
sorta helps with cofounder picking, e.g. 5 * chemistry + 3 * skills +
(total_experience / # jobs)

non-starters:

\- can't do it full time

\- squabble over equity or other founding stuff

\- don't want to do work (after you agree on tasks)

\- talk past each other often/can't work together

I'd second what other people in this thread have said about reading _The
Founder 's Dilemma_. It's well worth the time if you haven't read it.

[0] [https://codingvc.com/how-to-de-risk-a-startup/](https://codingvc.com/how-
to-de-risk-a-startup/)

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ConceptJunkie
Someone who knows "criteria" is a plural word. The singular is "criterion".

~~~
Mahn
Also someone who is not excessively pedantic.

~~~
umut
or maybe someone who has a certain degree of "excessively" in their "pedantic"

