[chinese_donald]

Yes. I have found (when I was looking for a co-founder) that many people like the idea of running a company, but do not really want to sacrifice the time and money it takes to make it succeed.

Lots of people are also not self-starters. They need a boss telling them what to do or they will do nothing or surf HN/Reddit all day.

One partnership I attempted had this result. It ended up being a boss/employee role where I had to dole out the assignments and 9 times out of 10, if I didn't push my partner, the projects wouldn't actually get done at all.

We actually did end up finishing the project (which is the only reason I stayed), but ran into more roadblocks. My ex-partner then ended up telling me that he just wanted to get a job and that he didn't want to work on the company anymore.

It's been a year and he is still unemployed and living on savings in his parent's basement (before working on our project, he was an engineer at a large company for over a decade).

When choosing a co-founder, the person needs to be a self-starter and have skin in the game (lots of time or money). If they don't, they will not feel compelled to stay and will most likely leave during the bad times.