Picking a cofounder can be extremely difficult. It's almost like finding a partner to marry.
You have to trust them on so many levels:
- That they're putting the same amount of effort in as you are, they're as invested (tons of horror stories about this.)
- That they have the compatible (maybe not exactly the same but close enough) long term vision for the company (general roadmap, how and when to take funding)
- You have to figure out a division of duties that's equitable. This can be extremely challenging especially if it's a software company and one of the cofounders isn't technical.
Past early 20's it gets extremely dicey. If you're taking year(s) off your career to build this thing, and investing money into it pre-seed, you're taking a huge gamble and you're just introducing this big additional wildcard. It's not like these people who meet in college and have nothing to lose.
I recently started a company and received several offers from people I didn't know at all to be my cofounder. Just like, cold LinkedIn messages. Like, you don't even know what the premise of my company is, and you haven't suggested what you would offer.
Even with friends - it's like that saying goes. Don't become roommates with your best friend. Once a lot of money is involved, things change.
I'm not saying it's impossible to have a good cofounder, but it's extremely difficult. Building a business is already hard enough. I almost wish it more common to take on a first employee who serves as a sort of co-founder who will wear a lot of hats, and still gets a great equity grant that vests over time (like 15%) but the risk is much more mitigated.
Absolutely, now how do you reliably determine whether someone is going to break under pressure, be tempted by money/power and ego? From my observations, given enough pressure & temptation many people can be easily manipulated in predictable ways.
Picking a cofounder can be extremely difficult. It's almost like finding a partner to marry.
You have to trust them on so many levels: - That they're putting the same amount of effort in as you are, they're as invested (tons of horror stories about this.) - That they have the compatible (maybe not exactly the same but close enough) long term vision for the company (general roadmap, how and when to take funding) - You have to figure out a division of duties that's equitable. This can be extremely challenging especially if it's a software company and one of the cofounders isn't technical.
Past early 20's it gets extremely dicey. If you're taking year(s) off your career to build this thing, and investing money into it pre-seed, you're taking a huge gamble and you're just introducing this big additional wildcard. It's not like these people who meet in college and have nothing to lose.
I recently started a company and received several offers from people I didn't know at all to be my cofounder. Just like, cold LinkedIn messages. Like, you don't even know what the premise of my company is, and you haven't suggested what you would offer.
Even with friends - it's like that saying goes. Don't become roommates with your best friend. Once a lot of money is involved, things change.
I'm not saying it's impossible to have a good cofounder, but it's extremely difficult. Building a business is already hard enough. I almost wish it more common to take on a first employee who serves as a sort of co-founder who will wear a lot of hats, and still gets a great equity grant that vests over time (like 15%) but the risk is much more mitigated.