[nirvana]

I've worked for a lot of startups and observed two primary causes of startup death: 1. VCs forced bad decisions on the startup. 2. Founders fought, resulting in bad decisions.

I think co-founders are an improvement over single-founder, but I think there should be a primary founder, the leader, with whom the buck stops, and with whom all of the co-founders are willing to defer if they don't reach consensus. There should be a chief and indians and even if everyone starts at the same time, the relationship should be discussed and understood in advance.

Much of the drama I've seen is inherent to the "Everyone is equal" perception.

If you're willing to be a cofounder in this environment- where you're NOT the leader and NOT equal to the leader- then from the beginning you've agreed to subordinate your ego to some extent to the founder, and so this should remove the ego driven need to defend yourself on things that really aren't that relevant which seems to be the cause of a lot of the drama.

I think PG echoed very similar sentiments in a recent interview with TC where he said he looked for teams where there was a clear leader. This fits my experience.

[tensor]

For practical reasons there needs to be someone to break ties in decisions. However, this is different to thinking that your are somehow better than others. In business you should check your ego at the door, especially if you are in a position where you need to be the tie breaker.

The idea of "everyone is equal" is to remind yourself to respect your coworkers, actually consider their inputs, and remember that you too can be just as wrong as you might think others are. The idea not "we are equal thus if we disagree then nothing happens."