| 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. |