How To Navigate Co-Founder Disputes

then it couldn't be me. It's gotta be this other person. It takes two. That's the reality. You can, like, even be running a successful company and wake up one day and be like, holy shit. Like I hate my life. I hate my job. I don't wanna do this anymore.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think in in these relationships that are so intense is where we get so hurt. Don't feel alone if you're going through this. It's actually very normal. I mean, is why I think YC was special for me too. I like almost repressed this memory over the years because it's so embarrassing when I look back on it.

Of course, like, it doesn't matter, and all that debate only led to a bad outcome anyway.

Welcome back to another episode of the Light Cone. I'm Gary. This is Jared, Harge, and Diana. And collectively, we funded companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars right when they're just a few people. And today, we're gonna try something different. We're actually gonna talk about cofounders and specifically cofounder conflict.

You know, how do you work through that and what that means for your startup and actually for your life. I feel like when I was starting my company,.

this is an episode that I would not have listened to because I was like, oh, stupid, like, emotional crap. I just wanna, like, write code and, like, learn about technology. And if someone had, like, forced me to sit down and listen to an episode like this and really think about this kind of stuff, that would have been the number one most helpful thing in my startup.

Because actually the thing that held us back were all people problems. They were all issues like the ones we're gonna talk Yeah. I mean and that sort of makes sense, actually. I mean, what is a company if not people making pretty hard decisions,.

hundreds of them a week, maybe tens of thousands over the course of a year? And then these little decisions, you know, might be fraught, might be obvious, but either way, either it's the right decision or the wrong one, and then it compounds.

And so when you look at, like, one of these unicorns or these, like, Decacorn companies, you know, frankly, big tech companies that are worth a trillion dollars. Those are the compounded decisions of cofounders and you and your executives. And so it all comes back to the very simple thing, which is people in a room fighting, not fighting, fighting fairly, not fighting fairly.

Maybe we could start with Harge, who famously was one of the cofounders with Patrick Collison of Stripe fame today. What was that like?

Well, it was definitely a long time ago. So it was 02/2007, which is what? Seventeen, eighteen, eighteen years ago now. How old were you? How old was Patrick? Like How old was I? I would have been 21, and I think Patrick would have been 18, I think. I the full the full story in that case was that I had actually applied to YC in late two thousand and six with my co founder and my cousin Corvier.

And we were accepted into YC, I think, as the first international team.

You're the first international team. Yeah. Incredible.

I think it was maybe one Canadian team, but that counts. Know? Yeah. Going be American team anyway. Okay. The time, neither Corvira and I knew how to code or build software or do anything. We'd hire these Eastern European contractors to build the whole website. And so a condition of being funded I had started learning PHP inside, like, taking it over anyway.

And so one of the conditions of YC funding us was that, like, we continue learning to program and and build stuff. So we were accepting to YC in, like, winter two thousand and seven. I spent most of the time just, like, learning to code, learning to build software, like, building our app and everything. But Bozo. Yeah. We pivoted into automatic during the batch.

But at the end of YC, I knew that we probably still it would be great to have someone else, like, working on the software besides me. And Paul Graham, the founder of YC, introduced us to this guy called Patrick. So you were actually also the first cofounder match at YC. Yeah. Actually, not quite. We're really doing this live. I mean, the first one was probably Aaron Schwartz. But With Reddit.

Yeah. Yeah. So it was a similar situation in that Patrick applied with this idea for, hey, like eBay meets Wikipedia. Our startup had pivoted into tools for eBay power sellers. And so PG was like, oh, like, you guys have this idea. You both wanna kill eBay. You have this idea for building tools for sellers.

This other guy's got this idea for, like, building a better interface for finding products people want to buy. You guys could use another programmer. He's like, seems like a really great programmer. Why don't you, like, meet up and see if you wanna work together instead of Patrick doing the next batch as a separate company? And so we we met up in London at the time.

He was in Ireland and we went back from San Francisco because we didn't have visas to live out here. And we just got along really well. We kinda did like, guess a shock on marriage. We were like, hey, like, yeah, this is we like hanging out. We spend the weekend together. We should totally just like join forces and start the company. And how'd that go?

Isn't like I mean, I think if I fast forward to the end, we sold the company. We were acqui hired within a year. And I largely because none of us were really that excited about what we were working on. I don't think either of us had really set out with, like, you know, our life's work is to kill eBay. They both for both of us, it had just been like a project that sort of, like, just kept going.

I think a year into it, we had raised a seed round. We weren't able to raise a series a when we were all sort of a little low on morale. And the Aqua hire was sort of a really graceful way out. Definitely interesting learnings from that, like, cofounder experience. And I I just think the number one thing is, like I mean, Patrick wasn't suited to a sort of CTO role.

Like, as is very obvious now, like, he's sort of an extreme outlier founder and probably one of the greatest CEOs, you know, like, probably of our generation. And I think it's hard to be cofounders with a personality like that when they're not the CEO. And I think in general, we see this You find that out. I found that out about myself, actually. What what did you find out? Oh my god.

I mean, I also started Posterous with my cofounder.

thinking, oh, I'm you know, some of it is like a little I'm realizing like a little bit cultural. I was reading about how, you know, East Asian cultures just have a desire for high social conformity. And, you know, these are things that I didn't really examine. I was just like, oh, I'm just, you know, normal American kid. It's fine.

But deep down, like, actually, yeah, I did not understand something about me, which is I actually do want control. And the control comes from wanting to be able to fix it if it's broken. And I actually think that that that is what act the CEO actually is signing up for. Mhmm. It's like, if it is broken, it is up to me to fix it.

And, you know, if you're that archetype and you're in a role where it is not up to you to fix it because you don't have the authority to actually make all, you know, those decisions when you have to, it just doesn't work out well. Right? Like, you find yourself in these sort of situations where you know that you want to do x, but, you know, it's not your job. Like, someone else wants to do y.

And then, you know, what do you do? You could just, like, live with it, I guess, or you could fight or, you know, sometimes you just have to be CEO. So you were the CTO and At Posterous. Yeah. Posterous. And when did you realize that about yourself? Next time you did it, you were the CEO. Oh, honestly, like, I burnt out at my startup, and that's when I realized it.

My startup story was funny because I feel like it was a misapplication of the advice that you often get or we, you know, frankly often give. It's like, in order for your startup to be great, you should try to have a great relationship with your founder. And I didn't know what that really meant, actually. I thought it meant get along with each other and, you know, maintain concordance. You know?

Like, if I believe x, but that other person believes y, like, well, I could change what I think, and let's go with what they say. And that's not a good relationship. That's like lying down. Like, that is literally self abandonment. And then the weird thing that I just yeah. I did this for a couple years. In the background, I try also tried to be like the hero coder.

You know, I take modafinil and, you know, literally work twenty hours a day. And I do you know, I try to hero design and hero code the whole thing. And then meanwhile, when we would have disagreements about product or what the users wanted or, you know, ultimately, when our users sort of flatlined, we had a the deepest disagreement was like, well, what do we do from here?

And my cofounder wanted to turn it into Google Groups. And I just sort of went along with it, you know. Well, I thought like, well, I'm the CTO and, oh, you know, I only you know, I'm the 40 in the sixty forty split, and I don't know if I wanna fight over this. So I just sort of went along with it. And then my body keeps a score, you know.

There's this long known book called The Body Keeps a Score that talks about when you don't work trauma out properly, it just like sort of lives in your body and it remembers. And so I actually had, like, a psychosomatic thing that happened where I couldn't sleep and I couldn't eat and I couldn't even, like, bring myself to go to the office. Yeah. I learned the hard way.

I mean, you know, luckily, again, like, also, you know, the great thing about Silicon Valley is the company we my cofounder ended up selling it to Twitter for $20,000,000, and that was really meaningful for me. And by then, like, Harge and Jessica and PG had peeled me off of the ground and brought me over to YC. So, I mean, the story ends well.

And at the time, funny enough, like, I felt like the victim. And then now, like, with a lot of hindsight, like, fifteen years of hindsight, I realize, like, I shouldn't have blamed my cofounder. Like, I did all those things. I'm the one who self abandoned the things that I knew. I'm the one who, like, didn't say the thing that I knew in my heart.

I imagine people are watching and maybe this is resonating for them. They're like, I know this is not going we're not making the right decisions. We're not going in the right way. My sort of thing for them is listen to that. Right?

This is a lot a lot of this came from, like, my family upbringing and my you know, my communication style was, like, the function of my ten thousand hours of human intelligence training called my childhood. And, you know, I think the more aware you are of what your sort of pre training is like, the more you can actually prompt yourself to not be like that.

And I think that that's something that I've worked really, really hard to change and change that about myself. But, you know, yeah, I, you know, I think the company could have been a 10 times or a hundred times better outcome than that $20,000,000 exit if I had figured that out at that right moment when we still could you know, we were still had the mojo.

Like, you know, people still knew what we were. You know, we could have done a lot of moves and ended up a little bit more like our friends at Weebly Mhmm. Who did, like, charge money, turned their very active user base into paying customers, and I think they sold to Square for like at least 10x what we did. And then Square stock, of course, went up another a whole lot.

So, you know, they they really did it the right way. I mean, I did this other thing at work also. Like, I'd take build up a lot of things, and then at the end of it, I'd blow blow it up. That's a thing that I'm also actively trying to really avoid, you know, 99% of the time.

It's like something that I do have control over is, you know, if I don't self abandon, then I don't, like, sort of become into this, like, pressure cooker situation. And then I'm not gonna blow up. Like, you know, what I wanna do is be authoritative. Like, how do I, you know, see something and say something at the moment that it happens instead of allowing it to, like, build up so much?

You have a great line that you often say around here, Gary, about authoritative versus authoritarian. Hey, we can share the principle. I think it's like a like a deep thing. Yeah. I mean, founders in particular, like, they're your organization will just build up around like how you approach things and how you talk about things and how you think about things.

And so, you know, self abandonment is kind of obvious. Like, you just you know, you're getting paid the big bucks. You you have equity. Like, you know, you are there to render an opinion and, you know, your feelings matter and count. So, you know, self abandonment kind of obviously is bad. And then way over on the other end is sort of being authoritarian. Right?

So that's not listening to anyone ever, jumping to conclusions. You know, one of the deeper things that I have now learned is that every decision, you know, might be fraught, might not be. You need to give it enough space and time for it to happen. And so for me, I was conflict avoidant. I wanted everyone to get along.

And that desire would sometimes cause me to short circuit all the things I needed to do to get to a good resolution. And so being authoritarian in that case is basically like skipping ahead to the end result. You're like, well, you know, I can't hold this conflict. This is too uncomfortable. Like, I don't like that people think this thing, and, you know, I don't agree.

So I I'm just going to like we're just gonna do this. Right? And then that's not leadership. That's just, you know, sort of disregarding the people around you. The bet much better version is actually have a debate. Like, it's good to have a healthy conflict where people, you know, say what's going on. And I regret that. Right?

Like, going back to my moment with my cofounder, Sitchin Agarwal, with Posterous. Like, if I could time travel myself back to that moment, there's no reason why we couldn't have had that conversation. And, you know, I didn't need to control the outcome. Like, you you know, I I didn't really need to be CEO in that moment to have a better outcome than the outcome that came out. Right?

Like, we could have had that conversation. We could have made that choice together. And, you know, because I burnt out, I because I couldn't show up to work anymore, I short circuited it and, you know, it ended up in self abandonment again.

And then if you think about any company that you're running, like, you know, we are operating in these sort of uncertain moments where, you know, there's door a and door b. Everyone has different feelings about it.

And so the important part is, like, can you sit down with the people who you trust and really care about and, you know, you have your shared goal and then have, like, a good faith argument about it and then come to an agreement? And that's, like, what authoritative to me means.

I think a lot of what you're saying, Gary, resonated resonates with my journey too. I think a lot of the journey with a cofounder is so intense because you're going through the high pressure of both of you really wanting to see this company succeed. You're pulling insane hours. You may not be sleeping. That's bad. Yeah. People should sleep. People should sleep.

And you're also going through all these very intense decisions. And maybe up to that point, I didn't have the need to self examine too much. Mhmm. And it's that pressure cooker that I realized patterns about myself that I didn't know. Like you described, same thing. We all have different history. We all come pre trained with our model with certain default settings.

My case, I was also grew up as an immigrant, and I think the safe thing is not to speak up, and it's just not rock the boat, keep things stable. Right? So like you, there was things that I would not agree, but I would just not voice them Mhmm. Because it was not safe from what I was trained on from my upbringing. And that kinda build up right.

And I think it was a process of really it's a bit of a gift to go into the journey of more self discovery. I wish I could have resolved things better, and it's still a work in progress to be able to sort of speak up. And it's a journey of I think in in these relationships that are so intense is where we get so hurt too because we both want it so badly in a different direction.

But I think it's also in these same relationships that we eventually heal too Yeah. Where I think if you make it, we all we all make it is for the message for everyone is that don't feel alone if you're going through this. It's actually very normal. I mean, this is why I think YC was special for me too. I could talk to other YC founders like, oh, I'm not crazy. Mhmm.

There's that and feeling that you're not alone. And the other part is like, okay. Maybe up to this point before the startup, I was successful. I was I got by enough with how I operated in this world, but this new level intensity, it needed to I needed to gain more control or power over myself and gain more more of these kinda skills that are new.

And it's like a journey of becoming a better version for yourself, which is a gift, and that's the thing that if I were to give advice to myself is you're not alone, and it's okay to kinda get more support. And as you talk to your cofounder, conflict will happen. Every relationship.

is is normal. Right? Diane, do you have a recollection of, like, a particular conflict, or was it, like, strategic or could be tactical, like, things that were just like, well, I believe x, and this other person, you know, who I cofounded this with is believes y.

I mean, in retrospect, I don't think they matter that much. It's kind of the irony when we forward That's a good point. Ten years later, it's like, it would have been fine, but it just they felt so life and death back then. Mhmm. That's interesting. Because I'm living there. It's like, I don't know, four k television version of it. Mhmm.

Not in retrospect, little details of how to run the team or that. It's like, okay. I think it's fine as long as we get the high level strategic direction right, which I think we did. So it was just being more.

more engaging in the debate and being more open. That's a good point. Yeah. Any given moment well, you have your ego. You have yourself. You have, like, your concept of yourself. And then all of that is wrapped up into, like, your identity, which then merges with the startup. And then the weirdest thing that sometimes with cofounders happens is if it doesn't go well, then it couldn't be me.

It's gotta be this other person. It takes two. That's the reality. Yeah.

In my startup, we had an equally dysfunctional relationship, but the diametric opposite. So I started my company with a friend from college, and we're both like American kids who grew up in sort of a classic American household. And we were both probably pretty spoiled by our parents and probably both pretty used to getting our own way to think about our pre training.

You can imagine how that played out over the summer. We basically fought, like, cats and dogs on every issue. I remember, in particular, speaking of trivial issues. So our company was called Scribd, and Scribd is a terrible name for a startup. No one can pronounce it. No one can spell it. It was like a thorn in our side for, like, twenty years.

The reason that we ended up with this horrible name is that we could not agree on what to call the company. We literally fought about it the entire y c batch. We probably spent tens of hours debating what to call the company.

It got so bad, we had to call in Paul Graham to mediate a dispute because we were unable to launch because we could not agree on what to call the thing we were about to launch. And I, like, I, like, almost repressed this memory over the years because it's so embarrassing when I look back on it. Of course, like, it doesn't matter, and all that debate only led to a bad outcome anyway.

This is something that I do see with a lot of the college age founders that we fund. You know, we fund you know, we here at College Age when we started our company, and I I've just seen that, like, a lot of them just, you know, like, me me and my cofounder, we just had not developed a good conflict resolution skills at the time.

And so, like, we would never do that if we were starting a company again now because we've, like, learned how to let the little things slide. We've learned just like how to how to solve things like that. But at the time, we just like hadn't learned that yet. And so we would just go around and around in circles. How do people end up learning that?

Like, what you know, one of the tools that I feel like I had to learn was.

it's gonna make me sound so therapy brain. But, you know, I'd actually really like this book called Nonviolent Communication. Because, you know, a lot of the arguments that you're having is like, have a certain mental worldview of how this is working, and this other person has a different one.

And then in that context, like, nonviolent communication talks about how you are totally free to talk about what's going on over here. But if Haj and I are fighting, like, it's not fair for me to speculate or say anything about, like, his intentions or his motivations. So if I were like, what's a concrete example? It's like, Hajj, like, you just think that I suck at vibe coding, don't you?

That's a judgment. Yeah. And so that kind of, you know, thing, honestly, like, I mean, whether you're married or, like, in a cofounder relationship, like, it's very easy to fall into.

that type of trap. It's just learning to be better humans. Right? And a lot of it is we don't know really what's people's intentions because those are really within them, and sometimes we ourselves are not aware. But what's observable is the behavior of what people do and how you feel. And those are okay things to call.

I mean, things that eventually learn to do with managing people and engineers is not to say, hey. You're a bad engineer. That's just really demotivating for your report. Right? Or your cofounder's like, oh, you suck at coding. That's just not helpful. What is helpful is like, hey. I saw you checked in this code, and it didn't do the QA test and other unit tests as we had agreed.

This is something that we can improve on. Right? And if you do, then we have to test it less and all and it's better for everyone. So I think the framework has to do with pointing specific things that people can improve instead of making broad strokes that cannot almost do a bit of a character assassination because people make mistakes. And part of it is pointing specific behaviors.

And then the other thing is giving them a carrot. If you do it and change it, this is how it's good for everyone. That's part of the MVC that makes it a win win, shaping a lot of the specific behaviors and things that make it people can act on, and it's less less of an attack. Right? Because it's not it's nothing about me fundamentally as a person or as an engineer.

It's just a thing that I did, and sometimes met I'm not I'm not sure how it happened, but whatever. But let's just get the output to be fixed. However you do it, if you do it, we can win this way. So that's how a lot of what I learned about getting better feedback, which I think is similar framework from the NBC.

And there's this touchy feely class from Stanford where they talk about throwing things over the net. Describing.

the net. You wanna describe the net? I think the idea is it's basically, like, in any communication, there's, like, sort of your reality, like, all the way you're experiencing it and all the assumptions you're making about what's going on. And then there's the other sides.

And, like, in conflict, it's totally fine for me to talk about everything on my side of the net, like, in the in from the frame of here's, like, how I'm feeling. Here's kind of like here's how it feels when you say I'm not a good vibe coder. Like so I'm all like, this is my area I can talk about as much as I want.

But I can't go over the net, which is like You're a bad engineer or something like that. Or or try and tell you like, try and tell the other person, like, what they're feeling or what they're thinking. And, like, I think there's a real natural human tendency to do that.

Like, you you assume that, like, if Gary says I'm a bad vibe coder, it's because he's, like, wants to hurt me and he's mad at me or, like, something like that. And that that's the concept going over the net is, like, I don't know what's going on in his head actually. And the only way I can understand it is to, like, ask him directly versus making lots of assumptions.

Yeah. You don't know. The only thing that you can do is the observe thing that maybe the the code that was shipped with pipe coding did this or that, but not the intention behind it. Right? That's that's the concept over the net, which is overall good communication with with anyone, not just for managing cofounders, significant others, friendships,.

just to be overall a better human. Yeah. I think you spend so much time with your cofounder or your spouse, honestly, that, like, you can easily get into this moment where it's, like, very at like, one on one adversarial. The bad version of this just sort of becomes, like, tit for tat. All of the arguments sort of, like, bleed over. Right?

That's, like, probably a really good tell for something's wrong, and maybe you should get, you know, an exec coach in there to help you, like, work through these things. Because basically, if it's like every conflict is like an everything conflict, you're like, okay.

Well, whether or not this button is red or blue, Like, if you if you view that conflict in the context of, like, all the other conflicts you've had that week, month, or, like, in your entire life, there's bleed over. And then can you imagine? Like, how are you gonna make a good decision about, like, whether that button is, like, red or blue?

Like, it's it's not really about whether it's red or blue. It's about, like, who wins and, you know, is there a point system? Like, well, last time you won this time. So and it's like, at that point, like, hey, what about the mission?

Like, what about the thing that we're out here to do, which is, you know, get users and make something people want? Like, you know, where does this decision fit within that? Or am I just, like, in an adversarial position with someone else? The idea of, sort of, like, the pre training or just, like, the the context, I think, a really interesting one.

Like, if I think if I think back to my experiences, first start up, I mean, it's, like, long, long time ago now. But I actually think so when I think of myself and Patrick and then Corvier, like, in many ways, we actually had similar communication. So we never actually had any, like, outright major arguments or, like, shouting matches or anything like that.

I think we all actually got along really, really well. And, actually, anytime we were talking about anything other than the startup, it was great. I still have, like, very happy memories of that. Like, we had, like, similar intellectual interests, and it was just, great.

But I think when it came to, like, the startup, like, fundamentally, what was just going on is I think we are at a point where no one was no one could really be motivated to the max or I think, like, do their best work unless they were actually, like, the CEO and had the final say on things. So I think the way it manifested in that context was just I don't think any of us would going a 10%.

Each of you went on to become CEO yourselves. Yeah. Exactly.

And then, like, the second time around, I think one thing that I learned was just, yeah, like, the the context that people have or, like, the cultures they've come up in, both personal and work, matter a ton. And they're a very concrete example. My cofounders with Triplebyte, my second startup, were early employees at Justin. tv, which really had become Twitch.

Justin dot TV was notorious for was known for having a early culture of, like, extreme aggressive heated debates, and it started with sort of some two of the cofounders in particular. But it was just part of the culture was that you would just like, the cofounders would just, like, shout at each other and scream at each other and, like and that employee and that was just kinda normal.

And so my two cofounders, this was their first job out of college. And so they kind of just thought that it was they that's how was that's how supposed to It's just people, like, screaming and shouting at each other all the time. It.

can work. I mean, if it's an opt in culture, I guess. Yeah. I don't if it was actually shouting. My my my mental image of it was more like vigorous debate. Like like debate society debate. Not like not like From what I've heard, it was both. Like Steve Ballmer, like throwing chairs at each other.

You you know, whatever the details, I think, like, if you grow up in, like, you have, like, this one type of culture where it's just, like, outright extreme aggressive debate is kind of the way you get to the truth and you win. It's not the culture that I can really work particularly well in.

I think if I'm in an environment where, like, people, like, shouting and screaming, I kind of just, like, they can't really think clearly. To me, it's like shouting and just kind of, like, overly heed debate just means you can't think clearly about stuff, and so you're just gonna make bad decisions.

And, like, I'm not sort of making a judgment on, like, what's right or wrong, but it's like, if you have, like, one view of, hey. Like, this is kind of what this culture means, like, oh, we're gonna make bad decisions. And the other person kinda feels like, oh, well, like, this is the only way you can make good decisions. Like, that is just gonna constantly create.

conflict between cofounders so they don't have, like, shared context. How did you when did you figure that out? Because there's a lot of self examination when you decide to go into a new cofounder relationship.

Mean, think it was pretty obvious. Well, it this was, for me, was an example of just you can know people in social context, and then, like, the work context is very, very different. So I know I knew both my Trailblike cofounders for kind of years before we started the company, but only ever probably more in, like, social low stress, like Mhmm. Environments.

People are very different in, like, high stress environments. And I think this is one of things we see in the batches too is, like, you should generally found a company with people you know, but it's still not, like, a guarantee that it's gonna work out because you might have been, like, social friends, and you've only ever hung out, like, watching movies and playing chess and doing fun stuff.

So you don't know how you're actually gonna react under stress. And how did that play out with Triple Byte Heart? Yeah.

I think it's kind of in high stress situate well, once we were in high stress situations, so which there are many in a startup, yeah, like, I it was sort of the dynamic would always be the way my cofounders handle it, I think, like, would get the best out of themselves is, like, aggressive debate. And for me, it's like, I think we should just, like, calm down and maybe write out our thoughts.

So just like it's like a totally different and so it's just like a total mash of styles. And I think my way of handling I mean, it was pretty apparent pretty quickly.

I guess my way of handling it was I should adapt and, like, and maybe there's something I can learn from, like, that culture and sort of in general, a lot of my desire to do a start up was, like, personal growth and, like, wanting to get better. I was like, okay. Well, it probably be helpful for me if I can, like, just get better at handling, like, more aggressive debate.

And so I will just, like, sort of mold myself into being able to, like, do that and handle it. And I do actually think there was value in that. Like, certainly like, there is certainly value in me able to, like, handle more aggressive debate and just, like, a different culture.

But I think the way it then played out is, like, four or five years into the start up, it was actually just a huge tax on me personally. And it's sort of a part of the reason I kind of burn out and just decided I wanted to move on and hand over the CEO reign. So it's like like, I'm just, like, exhausted.

Like, actually, for me, kinda, like, being in this culture and kind of trying to always be, like, the bring it back to the middle or turn the temperature down was just exhausting for me personally. What advice would you give to.

cofounder relationships that have this? There there's all these unknown unknowns that only play out in high stress scenarios, and how do you grow towards each other to make it actually effective for the company and be there in the long run? Yeah. Would you have done something differently knowing what you know now?

Yeah. I wouldn't have adapted. I think that's yeah. I think the number one thing is I just wouldn't have yeah. I would not have tried to adapt, actually. I would have forced.

Maybe a little bit. Yeah. There's.

yeah. Okay. Maybe there's a little bit amount of where it's like it's helpful. But, yeah, I think in general, if you're the CEO, it's kind of like you kind of have to intentionally shape the culture to get the best out of yourself.

And, again, maybe we all have different upbringings, but there's sort of like this I think you put it like this servant leadership model, which I think is very natural for, like, me and other founders I've spoken to. And that's like, oh, like, you have to sacrifice yourself for the the greater good, which is the org. And so you have to kinda, like, mold yourself into what the org needs.

And, yeah, I think that is And there's an asterisk. Yeah. There are limits to that. Yeah. Exactly. Right? I think we've all found various forms of that limit ourselves, personally. And, again, I think I mean, I think this is basically what a lot of the founder mood to has obviously caught off, and it sort of caught off in, like, the late stage context.

But I think it actually is this, like, underlying thread. It's a journey that lots of founders go through, not just in cofounder context, but it's like, you start the company. You kind of mold yourself into whatever you need for, like, the company in the org to succeed. And you can, like, even be running a successful company and wake up one day and be like, holy shit. Like I hate my life.

I hate my job. I don't wanna do this anymore. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And very specifically, it's like you ended up in a culture you don't enjoy working in. Again, we're talking about it in the cofounder context, which is if you adapt if you and your cofounder have totally different frames of reference and ways of getting the best out of yourselves That's gonna be hard. Yeah.

It's gonna be hard. But then if you if you're like a public company and you hire a bunch of execs and the execs all have like totally different ways and they like become the dominant frame, then you'd like basically in the same spot where you're like trapped. Like, you're you're the founder, but you feel trapped.

And I think a lot of the founder mode just captures that energy of actually, like, you have to stop adapting yourself at some point and make the org adapt to you to get the best out of you. I think that's what's very well said. I think part of the journey is that which.

for a lot of foundering teams, I think they should really get a lot of help outside of the company as well.

I do think founders should probably get, at some point, like, coach, a therapist to examine a lot of these things because a lot of these are kind of brewing in the background, and you don't even know how to articulate it, how to put it into words, what framework to use to even know that you're going through this transition. This is happening. This is what is needed of me at this point.

And you kinda need this partner outside partner to hold a mirror for you to know that, hey, Harsh. You're going through this. It was fine to mold yourself. The company got to this point, but you gotta make home for yourself to be able to live in it for a long run for a company because the founder is the one that's gonna stay. So what are the things that you need to keep changing?

And as founders, it's a very tough position to be in. You have to keep reinventing.

Yeah. I agree with that. Therapy therapy definitely.

helped me introspect on a lot of this stuff. I think if I had started therapy sooner, it would probably yeah. I would have stopped adapting myself much sooner. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I did it just because, like, I started the company, and I'm like, I'm normal. I'm fine. Like, I'm just like everyone else.

Like, I have no problems. And it turns out, like, that was not correct.

So, guys, I could imagine there could be some people who are listening to this, and they're thinking to themselves, wow. This cofounder shit seems like really hard and like a lot of work. Like, screw that. Like, I'm just gonna not have a cofounder so I don't deal with all this bullshit. What would you say? Like, no. I mean, like, I'm I'm kidding, but like I'm also serious. Oh, totally serious.

Like, I I actually think a lot of people feel that way. What would you say to those people? I think the uncomfortable thing to say that I think is true is.

only the truly superlative founders end up making products and services that are superlative. Like it or not, in order to create something of great value like that, game recognizes game.

So when p like, when someone is truly, like, recognizably good as an engineer or as a designer or as a product person or as a CEO or salesperson or whatever, it gets easier to find a cofounder because other people are like, that's the person who is like the best person I've ever worked with. The act of starting a company is like getting into a rowboat.

And it's like, we're gonna row out in the middle of the sea, and we're gonna find like, you know, the island of gold. Right? Mhmm. And it's like, do you want the other people in that rowboat to be the most capable people who are, like, super fierce and, like, you know, never say no? Or do you want them to be, okay?

And so I you know you know, we've been talking about a lot of the psychological parts of it, but a cofounder, you know, is a little bit of a test. Like, are you yourself like someone who someone else would say, hey. Like, that person's the best at that thing, and, like, let's go do this thing. Like, game recognizes game. Like attracts like.

And some of it is like, man, if someone's having a really hard time finding a cofounder, the advice might actually be like, you're not at the edge of human capability yet. And, you know, that's okay. Like, you know, some of it is like, find a way to get there. Mhmm. Because then you will find the other people who are, you know, sort of rolling in that direction. Mhmm.

And you'll just look to the left or right, and it's like, you guys will recognize each other, and then you'll be able to create something really great. But I mean, the other the other reason to have cofounders that that, like, I think just bears out is like, a bad cofounder is definitely worse than being solo.

But the best possible world is like having someone who is alongside you, who is mega gets you. And when you're having a bad the worst day, you know, and everyone does, like, you know, ideally, your co founder is there to just pull you up and, like, likewise. And you can go way farther for way longer and create way more awesome things with people who, you know, hey. They're your people.

Startups that work are so rare, you sort of need it all. Like, you kinda need, like, every possible advantage you can get. Yeah. Going for no cofounder is just sort of a.

limiting downside type optimization, and that's just, like, not the right way to think about startups. Yeah. To your point. Like, yes, you will have less stress in theory if you don't have a cofounder, but then, yeah, the truly exceptional breakout companies have a really great healthy cofounder relationship. Yeah.

To say, I mean, it's it's a variant of the, like, why do people raise VC funding argument, where it's like, oh, you don't have to raise VC funding. Like, you could just, like, grow you could grow, like, within your revenues, for example. It's like, you totally could, but, yeah, you have to kind of you have to play to win. And, actually, like,.

the way to win is to attract all the resources. It's to, like, get the capital to get the best people to win the market and be dominant and take it all. Yeah. If you don't play to win, someone else is gonna play to win. And guess who's gonna win? Yeah. I think Hajj and I texted this to each other once.

It's, know, if you don't want to have people problems, then you you need to live on an island totally alone with no one in your life. This is this is the.

Renee Adler philosophy. It's basically just like all problems are actually, like, people problems and interpersonal problems. And that if you wanna have no problems, then, yeah, like, go live alone on an island, and you have, like, theoretically no problems. Yeah.

But, yeah, if you actually wanna live any form of, like, fulfilling life, you have to you need to be part of a society and a group of people, and you have to work through the problems and get good at dealing with them and get good at handling conflict and and.

working with other people if you wanna achieve anything. Yeah. I mean, all the things we've been talking about, like, you know, I mean, I think we've been pretty vulnerable and talked about, like, some pretty painful things, but that's the fun a little bit. Like, that is literally the work.

Like, Alan Watts has this saying where it's like a lot of people in modern society run around, and they're just trying to get to the end. They're like, oh my god. Like, let me get to all the way to the end. Like, you know, do I need to get done with this? Right?

And then that's sort of like going to a symphony and just like instead of the concert playing out, they just play the crescendo at the end. That's it. Everyone files in. It just goes like, and then that's it. You're done. And it's like, no. That's not you know, like, the the journey is actually the fun part. Like, the act of being, you know, not going over the net.

Like, can't learn to play tennis and not go over the net if you have no one on the other side of this. And so yeah. I I mean, whether it's cofounders or in your, you know, relationships, I don't know. It feels like all the same lessons a little bit. And this is one game that is actually worth playing. With that, we'll see you guys next time on the Lite Cone.

I'm excited to announce that this summer, YC will be giving grants to college students to work on their own technical projects. We're calling these the summer fellows grants. We think now is the best time for students to spend the summer working on things they find technically interesting. Ambitious technical college students can now build something important before the summer is even over.

The grants will be $20,000 in cash and another $90,000 in compute credits from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Each summer fellow will get to attend YC's AI startup school in June and we'll also host some in person coworking days at the YC office in June and August. At the end of the summer, you'll present what you've built to everyone.

We're most interested in funding technical projects that are using AI in new ways, but we're happy to fund anything that smart programmers find interesting. The grants are available to any undergraduate computer science or engineering students, including freshmen and students outside The US.

Our goal is to give you the freedom to work on your own projects independently and meet some other smart students while you're doing it. If this sounds interesting to you, please submit an application telling us about the most interesting technical project you've worked on so far and what you're thinking about working on this summer.

If you don't have a project in mind yet, just tell us about the technical things you find interesting and have been thinking about recently. Thanks.