

Questions to Ask Potential Cofounders: The Master List - jmalter
http://founderdating.com/questions-to-ask-potential-cofounders/
What are the topics you and your cofounder should cover before you take the leap? Here is the complete and Master list.
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tptacek
This is such an important topic, you'd hope a thread with discussion and
suggestions would get pegged to the top of the site. If this was a PHPBB,
you'd want this to be one of the "sticky" threads.

Key questions (some overlap) from my experience:

* Are we the founders allowed to work with or advise any other startups or projects before XXX milestone in the company?

* What is the decision mechanism we will use to resolve intractable disputes, and why do we believe it will work?

* What is the mechanism by which a founder will be released from the team, and how will we engage it?

* How are we vesting?

* Can we make a list of every acquaintance we could ever possibly foresee hiring? How will we _voir dire_ those people, so we aren't fighting over whose friends we're willing to hire?

* How many months of salary per employee will we need to add a headcount?

* At what point will we pull the trigger and start pitching our offering to customers? Are we waiting for a rev1 or beta release? Can we start selling now?

* Who apart from the dev lead will decide when it's time to "ship" or "sell"?

* How will we decide to "pivot" or give up on our original offering?

* If our idea fails, are we continuing as this team, or reevaluating? If we're not sure, how will we decide? How do we know we're giving each other honest answers?

* As we willing to add part-timers, juniors, or indefinite interns, and if so, how will we account for them?

* What level of agreement among the founders is required to fire an employee?

* Under what circumstances would we consider adding an employee to our "management team" or "cofounder pool"?

* Once we have a management team, will we continue managing it and the rest of the company as a group of cofounders, or will that conversation be vested in the management team?

* What resources will we spend on promotion and appearance marketing? Do we require a high-end website? Do we require a professional logo? Do we require business cards? Will we be attending conferences?

For me, I'd want a theme of my cofounder questions to be, "how do I know we're
being honest with each other and really engaging the question"? Most important
cofounder questions are easy to B.S., and B.S. answers buy you nothing; they
may actually make things worse, either by needlessly committing people to
positions or providing ways to hang people in arguments later. "Why do we
think this answer is right?" "When would we reconsider it?" "How sure are we
about this?"

I could make a list of answers I thought I was sure of last time I started a
company (this one) that it turned out I was dead wrong about.

~~~
lacerus
From Wikipedia for other curious non-native speakers:

Voir dire /ˈvwɑr ˌdiər/ is a legal phrase that refers to a variety of
procedures connected with jury trials. It originally referred to an oath taken
by jurors to tell the truth (Latin verum dicere), i.e., to say what is true,
what is objectively accurate or subjectively honest, or both.

~~~
dctoedt
> _...an oath taken by jurors to tell the truth (Latin verum dicere), i.e., to
> say what is true ...._

I've always been amused by this interpretation and wondered where it
originated --- it seems like an urban legend --- because:

1\. In legal parlance, the term _voir dire_ refers to the questions posed to
prospective jurors by the judge or lawyers to assess whether any of them is
biased or has some other disqualification or disability.

2\. The term _voir dire_ is French: After the Norman Conquest, that term and a
number of others gradually infiltrated the language of English courts [1].

3\. In French, _voir_ is the infinitive _to see_ and _dire_ is the infinitive
_to say_ ; as someone who was bilingual in French and English as a kid (but,
sadly, is no longer), I always took the term _voir dire_ to mean, roughly,
"let's see what they [the prospective jurors] have to say."

Fun fact: In Texas, you'd better pronounce it "VORE dye-er" if you don't want
to be recognized as a noob or an out-of-towner. The rest of the country seems
to use the French pronunciation "vwahr deer."

[1] <http://www.michbar.org/journal/pdf/pdf4article756.pdf>

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esharef
I think these questions are awesome. As someone who lost one co-founder early
on (there were three of us and one person quit right after YC), I wish we'd
talked about some of this stuff more.

Having said that, I actually think in reality this conversation is very
difficult to have.

If you've never started a start-up before you just don't know what to expect
so some of these questions don't make sense. I would have WANTED to answer
these honestly, but when I started HireArt I really had no clue whether I'd
want to raise outside money (let's just get started was my motto) or which
attributes we'd en up clashing on.

I think this makes more sense if you've started a company before and can
anticipate the feelings and issues that will arise (but in that case you
probably already know which questions to ask and don't need a guide).

Overall I guess I think it's really important to talk and to talk a lot.
However, don't estimate how much there is that you just don't know about
yourself until you're doing the start-up.

~~~
smirksirlot
I agree that this is a super hard conversation to have. BUT, if you're working
with the right people, I think they'll understand that a lot of these
questions are "must-have" conversations. Might not get to all of them, but
even some will be super helpful to at least orient the ship and crew in the
same direction.

~~~
jmalter
agree with both of you - not always easiest conversations, but they are
important questions. As I say in the post, it's ideal to try to have a more
natural conversation - not just go down the list. But sometimes you just have
to ask tough questions - it's more awkward/painful to "break-up" down the
road.

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DanielRibeiro
Nice Compilation. A few more views on this topic:

\- From Elad Gil: [http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/02/how-to-choose-co-
founder.htm...](http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/02/how-to-choose-co-founder.html)

\- From Venture Hacks: <http://venturehacks.com/articles/co-founder-interview>

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olgeni
"Is your mind clouded by any kind of expensive leadership or self-help course,
at the end of which you get to 'walk on fire' to test your renewed self-
esteem?"

Yes -> run.

"Do you believe in any form of magical thought? Do you believe that Steve Jobs
Himself watches over you from a cloud, without judgement, gently supporting
each and every decision you make?"

Yes -> run faster, screaming.

True Story Bro.

~~~
dhimes
LOL The problem with psychotics is that they can be so damn convincing. It's
almost it's own filter for me: if this guy is so absolutely convinced that no
argument is even worth considering, he's nuts. (Applies to women too).

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jjacobson
The section on "Personal Priorities and Risks" is very important. Deciding
when to go full time and how much each cofounder is willing to put on the line
is something everyone needs to think about going into a partnership.

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aalter
Really helpful to have this concise document...what a great list of things to
consider about a partnership. So many of these are easily overlooked.

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zabbyz
this is super helpful - so glad to have this as a resource + to see this being
talked about.

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alimoeeny
website is not accessible for me, anyone cares to paste the questions here?

