Keys To Successful Co-Founder Relationships

Where do you find a cofounder? How do you evaluate a cofounder? And once you have one, how to work together? Thanks so much for having me, Kat. I'm really, really excited to talk about this today, actually. Finding the right cofounder is arguably the most important part of starting a company.

I've seen so many startups fail or succeed due to cofounder issues, and so I'm really glad we're doing this today. Yeah. And to start things off, let's clarify something. What do we mean by the word cofounder? Yeah. So quite literally, a cofounder is someone who starts your startup with you. So when you apply to YC, we consider someone to be your cofounder if they have at least 10% equity.

But in general, a cofounder is someone who is there from the beginning or close to the beginning who is building your company with you. So if I'm hardworking and smart, can I just start my startup alone? So, yes, Kat. You are very hardworking and smart, and I don't doubt you. The short answer is yes. You absolutely can. But it's it's really hard, like, really, really hard. You know?

A startup is a very difficult journey for anyone, and doing it alone makes it more than twice as hard. And so, you know, we really recommend having a cofounder for the following reasons. So number one is productivity. So moving fast is critical in a startup. And when you have two people, three people, you can literally move two or three times as fast. You can just get so much more stuff done.

Additionally, your brainstorming can be higher quality. Right? You can help each other see around corners. And bounce ideas off each other. Exactly. Kind of maybe not get into a rut with a bad idea and have someone checking. Accountability is a little bit more effective when there's someone else there. You do your daily stand up and say, this is what I'm gonna get done today.

And then there's someone there the next morning to ask you whether or not you did it. And then I think moral support is another huge and sometimes overlooked component. So a startup has a lot of ups and downs. There's moments of optimism. There's moments of despair.

And having someone that can both empathize with you but also balance you out in some of those scenarios can be just so helpful to keep moving. If you're not convinced by those theoretical reasons, it turns out that the empirical evidence also supports having a cofounder.

Most successful companies have been started by more than one founder. Even companies that are famous for only one of its founders actually had at least two, Microsoft. We all know Bill Gates, but Paul Allen was around for ten years.

Apple. So Steve Jobs is the face of Apple. But Steve Wozniak was the one who designed and built the Apple computer. And little known fact, they actually had a third cofounder, Ronald Wayne. He left pretty early, but there were three of them in the beginning. Yeah. And Facebook,.

or I guess Meta now, if you've seen the social network, you'll know that Mark Zuckerberg had not one, not two, not three, but four cofounders. So the list obviously goes on and on, but we also have some quantitative data to share. So while YC does fund solo founders, yes, we do. We do fund solo founders. Of YC's top hundred companies, only four were founded by a solo founder.

Are there really only four? Yeah. Yep. And in those cases, there is a clear pattern among the solo founders as well. They are always able to make progress on their own. So they built their own MEP. They got their own users, etcetera. Yeah.

So I actually know some of these guys. They're exceptional.

And it's worth repeating then that while having a cofounder dramatically increases your chances of success, YC actually does fund solo founders. We believe that ultimately, you are the best judge of whether having a cofounder is the right call for you. Yeah. Absolutely.

But if you are convinced that you need a cofounder, let's talk about where to find one. Divya, any ideas? Yeah. So the obvious place to start is people that you know. So friends,.

classmates, colleagues. If you're in school, this is an awesome time to find a cofounder. Right? You're surrounded by classmates, friends, people who'd be fun to work with. Fewer responsibilities. Yes. Fewer responsibilities for sure. If you're working at a company, look to your coworkers that are smart, capable, impressive, people that you work well with.

And beyond that, you know, look to other people in your network, friends, friends of friends. And if you see someone who you think might be a good match, work on a project with them. Right? Like, this can be a lower commitment way to test out your working relationship, your skill sets than an actual start up, and you can kinda get a sense for what it would be like to work with them.

As an added bonus, the kind of person who wants to work with you on an evening or weekend project is, like, usually really good cofounder material. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. These are all really great avenues for finding people you know in real life. In parallel, I would also highly recommend checking out YC's cofounder matching platform.

Here's how it works. When you sign up, you tell us about yourself and what you're looking for. So we ask you stuff like, are you technical? Do you have an idea you're working on? Or are you open to new ideas? How many hours a week are you willing to commit? What industries are you interested in? Can you be responsible for, you know, engineering, sales, product, etcetera?

So once you've done that, our team will manually read and approve your profile just to make sure, you know, you're not a robot, you're not a dev shop out here. And once you're approved for the platform, you can then look at profiles that pass your filters. If you see someone interesting, you can send them a message. And if they're also interested in you, they'll match with you.

We recently also built a new feature that we call speed dating. I love that. It does come from the concept of speed dating. You set aside an hour to be online. You match with other founders for five minutes of one on one video chat at a time. And it's just a really great way to quickly meet tons of people interested in starting startups, which is already a pretty big filter.

That sounds really helpful, kind of especially as part of YC's greater ecosystem. Kat, how many users do you have? Am I in office hours? Well, I do know the answer to this question. So we launched Co Founder Matching early last year. We now have 40,000 profiles on the platform, and we actually just crossed a hundred thousand matches last week. A hundred thousand matches is pretty impressive.

Do you have any success stories you can share? I do, and I'm really excited about it. So while it's a little bit early to say if these teams will last, you know, seven to ten years, we have seen some really promising early signs. Over a dozen teams have met on the platform, decided to be cofounders, applied to YC together, and actually gotten accepted. That's awesome. I have an example.

This is Sequin. So Verinda was a PM at Visa where she launched credit cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve. She left her job and spent about a year working as a solo founder on a product to help women build credit. She was looking for a technical cofounder who was mission driven and had fintech experience. Mark had ten years of engineering experience at PayPal.

He spent six years as CTO of family oriented startups, and he wrote on his profile that he cared deeply about gender equity. Such a good match. So they were a perfect match on paper, and it turns out they were a perfect match in real life. They met on Zoom. They just vibed instantly. So they arranged to meet in person. They met every day for the next week in person.

And so it was really easy for them to decide to work together. These guys went through YC and raised $5,700,000.

That sounds like a dream, actually. It sounds like kind of a, like, love at first sight scenario.

Do all cofounder matches take so quickly, or do you have examples of things that maybe took a little bit more time to to take? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, every story is a little different. So this is Kiwi Biosciences. They're another team from the summer twenty twenty one batch.

These founders were actually some of the earliest users of cofounder matching, which is really cool, like first couple hundred users. Angie started a company to solve her own pains with irritable bowel syndrome. David had experience in this industry. He actually started a startup in the same problem space before, so she knew right away that he was the one.

But when they first met, David was actually working on a trial project with a different potential cofounder he met through the platform. Plus, he didn't like her idea. He thought her idea would never work, and so he ended up just being an adviser instead, and they met once a week for a while.

But eventually, even though he wasn't sold right away on the idea, he was really impressed by Angie as a founder. He believed in her. So they eventually took a very structured approach. They filled out this 50 question long co founder questionnaire and spent a month working on a trial together. And by the end of that month, it was easy.

So they also went through YC, and they raised, like, $1,500,000.

As an aside, that's interesting that he didn't love the idea but thought Angie was awesome. This is something we see in general across the space, so that's And even at YC's. Yeah. Even at YC. So while we're on the top of co founder matching success, can you share any tips on getting the most out of the platform for anyone out there that's gonna use it?

I imagine that some of this advice actually applies more broadly to a co founder search, whether or not it's on the platform. But, like, what have you seen? Yeah. I would love to talk about this. So I have two main tips. Number one is just really fill out your profile.

It sounds basic, but the difference between 10% and a % effort is very apparent, especially when you're comparing these profiles side by side. So what I mean by that is, you know, put up a picture or a video. Photos are optional on the platform, but it helps make you look like a real person. You should brag a little.

So some people, especially women or people from other cultural backgrounds, value humility a lot. But this is not the time to be humble. Potential cofounders don't know you. They're only seeing a snapshot of you. So you really wanna sell yourself here. Yeah. You wanna stand out from the crowd. Right?

Like, this is the time to just, like, put your achievements front and center. Yeah. And I think this is especially important if you are a nontechnical founder with an idea trying to recruit a technical cofounder.

This is a really common case on the platform, but the thing is that technical founders get lots and lots of invites, and so you have to differentiate yourself by bragging about your accomplishments and maybe show them the progress you've made on your own. There's a huge difference between someone saying, hey, I have a great idea. I'm just waiting for someone to help me build it.

Versus like, hey, I'm working on an idea. I have an MVP. I have some users, and I want a partner to come help me build it out. Yeah. Remember, people are joining you as a person, not your idea. Right? Exactly. And so, like, show what you can do as a person.

Yeah. The second thing I would say is meet as soon as you can, in real life if possible, but Zoom is also great. According to stats from our platform, 70% of all Meets happen within two weeks of matching. So what I'm gathering is you either meet really soon or not at all. Alright.

Now that we have some avenues for finding potential cofounders, let's talk about how you know if they're a good fit for you. Divya, you've started multiple startups. What are some things you look for when evaluating a potential cofounder? Yeah. So this might sound extreme, but a cofounder relationship is like a marriage.

And it's really important to get this right. And in many cases, you might spend more time with your cofounder than you do with your actual spouse. Especially if things are going well. Especially if things are going well. Exactly. So I wanna talk about a few things to align on early, and we're gonna talk about some of these again when we talk about working with your cofounder.

But early on, here's some conversations to have. So one is goals and values. So what motivates you? Why do you wanna do a start up? How stress so how do each of you handle stress, and how will you help each other handle stress? Are you able to provide what the other person needs? Because there are gonna be stressful times. Communication.

So can the two of you or three of you have an honest and frank conversation with each other and still move forward productively? Finances are a very important one to talk about early. How long can each of you go without a salary or with benefits? What salary requirements do you have?

Is there kind of a timeline in mind of which, you know, you need to have more of a market rate salary or raise money? Make sure there's some alignment on this or at least a conversation. And lastly, commitment. How many hours a week can you work? You know? Like, what do evenings and weekends look like? Are you guys on the same page around this?

Just there's no right or wrong answer, but these conversations need to be had early on. And then lastly, Kat touched on this earlier, but meet in person if you can. It's a lot easier to communicate and get a sense of compatibility and communicate some of the nuance on the above topics if you're actually sitting face to face with someone. I'd like to also add on a counterpoint.

There are some things people tend to think are important, but maybe aren't actually so important. So specifically, what I'm talking about is complementary skills. I got an email the other day from a founder telling me they needed to find someone to help fundraise and bring in a network of potential investors and experienced board members. No. No. You don't. You can learn that.

Actually, most skills are very learnable. So that includes fundraising, marketing, even sales. It's much more important that you're compatible with your cofounder in the other ways Divya mentioned above. Yeah. So there's one exception to this rule, actually. And so absolutely right. You don't need someone who can come in and, like, do your fundraising for you. But if you're nontechnical,.

you should really think seriously about getting a technical cofounder. And one of the most common questions we get from nontechnical cofounders is, I can't find a technical cofounder. What should I do? Can't I just hire a dev shop to help me build out my product? The short answer is, please don't do that. Like, if you really can't find a technical cofounder, you should learn how to code.

Dev shops pose a ton of challenges, especially for really early stage companies. You know, not only are they costly from day one, but it can be extremely challenging to iterate quickly as you're learning from your users. You know, dev shops are designed to ship clear deliverables. And as an early stage startup, like, don't have a clear deliverable.

Like, you're kind of, like, feeling around in the dark and building for your users, and the requirements are changing on the fly. They also don't care about your user. They're just like, I'm gonna do this thing. You're gonna pay me. Exactly. And, you know, iteration can just become really clunky, ineffective, and, again, very expensive.

So in short, a technical cofounder is an amazing investment early on if you can find one. The last thing I want to bring up in this section about evaluating cofounders is trial projects. The only way to tell if you work well together with someone is to try working together.

So at Cofounder Matching, we recommend that before jumping into a full blown cofounder relationship, you work on a trial project together first. Essentially, you agree beforehand on a timeline, usually two to four weeks, a tangible project goal and scope, and also who owns the work at the end. It's a very structured way to try working together with some mutual expectations.

I do wanna say though, remember at the end of the day, just like with any other risks you take in life, you will eventually need to take a leap of faith. And that's especially true when you're starting a startup, which is risky in all sorts of ways. So find someone you're willing to take a leap of faith with. Yeah. Absolutely.

And, you know, we talk a little bit about, like, derisking things, and, like, a lot of these questions we talked about earlier are ways to derisk that cofounder relationship. But, again, like, derisk it until the point you can, and then And then you just gotta go. So let's say you found someone you wanna work with, you know, using cofounder matching or one of these other ways we talked about.

So now I wanna move on to an important topic, which is how to split equity with your cofounders. So the general y c advice is that by default, you should just split equity equally. So lots of options here, but you can kinda start from that baseline.

And the reason for this is because, you know, you would like to be making equal contributions going forward, and you should both be equally motivated to work hard for a very long time. You should value your cofounder. And if you don't, like, why are they your cofounder? But but Divya,.

I came up with the idea. Kat, ideas don't matter.

Ideas are cheap. Right? And if things go well first of all, the idea is very likely to change over time as you listen to your users. But if things go well, you're gonna be working together on this for the next seven to ten years. Or more. Or more. Exactly. So, you know, the point in time that you came up with the idea is just such a small part of your startup journey.

Right. That makes sense to me. So here are some other really common bad reasons we hear for splitting co founder equity unequally. So of course, I came up with the idea. I started working on this idea before my co founder did. My co founder took a salary and I didn't. I'm older, and I'm more experienced than my cofounder. We need someone to tiebreak when we have arguments.

So there is a good point here about needing a tiebreaker, but we'll talk about that in a second. It doesn't need to be done through equity. Exactly. I launched my MVP without my cofounder.

My cofounder agreed to their smaller share. Another one is, you know, I raised so many thousand dollars before my cofounder joined. So even if you think you got a good deal now, this could potentially result in resentment later down the line. Yeah. You shouldn't be trying to get a good deal from your cofounder. It kinda starts the relationship off on a bad foot. Yeah.

So the bottom line here is all of the work is still ahead of you.

You both need to be happy and motivated for a long, long time. Startup outcomes are pretty bimodal, so don't jeopardize your cofounder relationship over a few percents. Alright. So we've talked about how to get set up with a founding team. It is time to get to work. Now we're gonna share some stories and best practices on how to work with your cofounders.

When it comes to teamwork, one thing we often hear is that communication is extremely important.

Divya, do you have any advice for our founders on how to keep clear and open lines of communication? Yeah. This is a great question. So communication is so important, and it's as important as it is in any close relationship in your life. So we talked about this earlier, but a co founder relationship is it's not a stretch to think of it as a marriage. Yeah.

And I imagine that setting up these communication channels starts very early in the relationship. Yep. Like almost before you start working together,.

you need to align on certain expectations. Right? I've seen co founders enter into relationships with very different pictures of what it looks like to work together. Yep. From anything from, you know, how many hours you work, to how much salary you're gonna draw, to how many meetings a week you plan to have. You're so right, Kat. Talking about expectations.

is one of the first ways to really test out your communication with your cofounder and make sure that you can actually have hard or uncomfortable conversations while still being productive. So at my first startup, we initially had four founders, all friends. Still friends? Still friends. Still real still very good friends.

And there were a couple of topics that we should have discussed early on that just became bigger problems later than they needed to be. So first, we found out pretty early on about six months in that one of our cofounders, he kinda had a timeline in his mind for how long he would wait for the product to go viral. It was a totally reasonable expectation, but it's not something we'd really discuss.

So about six months into our startup journey, he was getting very frustrated with the lack of traction. And it kinda caught us all by surprise since we hadn't talked about it. And, you know, it was something that just kind of built up over over time, and he left the company pretty abruptly.

Another topic that we should've discussed earlier was about finances and how long we could each afford to go with little to no salary. So there was a little bit of a mismatch with the founders on this. Of course, everyone's financial situation is different. This put a little bit of unexpected pressure on the company at some at one point. It kinda came out of nowhere.

It felt like it came out of nowhere. We ended up feeling like we needed to raise. We started considering some, like, lowball acquihire offers. And while we didn't end up taking any of these deals, I think if we'd known sooner, we probably could have made some decisions earlier on to avoid these distractions.

And so just these conversations would have been really helpful to have had up front. Gotcha. Yeah. These scenarios seem pretty common. Absolutely. And it'd be really helpful to discuss these things in advance. Do you have a list of topics you recommend that founders discuss with their co founders before committing?

Yeah. So this list is by no means exhaustive, but here are some good ones to start the conversation. So one is, how much do you wanna work on your startup versus not? We talked about this earlier, but, you know, evenings, weekends, vacations, like, of what are those expectations? What do you guys both have in your minds? They can be pretty different. They can be very different.

Sometimes people just assume and don't have the conversation. Just, like, don't assume. You know, put it out there. What is being available? And, like, what are response times look like? Like, you know, if I Slack you and you write back to me six hours later, like, am I gonna be frustrated, or am I gonna think you're really responsive? Like, you know, people have different senses of this.

How long can each of us go without salary or benefits? Again, this is a very important one to talk about. And what do each of you need to see at different milestones to keep working on it and to stay motivated? Does anyone have a it needs to be working by x date?

And if so, like, what does working look like? Yeah. This is such great advice. I can definitely see how misalignments on these expectations can start small, but really fester into resentment over time. Absolutely. Aside from aligning on expectations, we hear that building trust is another key element of a co founder relationship.

I've personally seen this at the root of lots of relationship issues, not just for co founders, but for friendships, family relationships, etcetera. We see co founder breakups all the time at YC, and a lot of them stem from a lack of trust that grows out of control. Divya, how has trust played a role in your cofounder relationship? Yeah. So.

trust is a really big one. One of the things I haven't mentioned until now is that for both my startups, one of my cofounders was my husband. Still my husband. My husband. I knew you were gonna ask. And for my second company, he was my only cofounder. It was just the two of us.

And one of the reasons we were able to make decisions so quickly and draw such clear lines of ownership was that we already had so much trust built up from being married, but also from having run a company together earlier. Yeah. You know, of course, not everyone comes in with this much underlying trust, but having that trust made the cofounder relationship very, very functional.

I think previously existing relationships with your cofounders could go both ways. Oh, right. Of course. Personal relationships don't always translate into functional cofounder relationships. Yeah. That's a % true. A a previously existing personal relationship could totally go both ways. And let me give you an example of one that did not go so well.

So last batch, last YC batch, we had a a company apply. We we thought the founder was great, and we said, don't you come back with a cofounder? And so he went and he found a friend, someone who he'd been very good friends with for a long time. They hadn't worked together. He convinced him to join the company. They came back. They started the batch.

The CEO had been running the company for about six months. And to him, it it really felt like his company. Oh, no. Yeah. So he brought in this friend. And from day one, he just kinda micromanaged him and didn't give him enough space to succeed or fail at the projects he was responsible for. And this is an important one. Right?

He would kinda jump in before the projects had time to work. Because at a startup, like, things take time Right. And everyone needs a little bit of space, and they need that trust. And so he would jump in, and he would just kind of berate his cofounder when things were starting to go wrong.

And when you trust someone, like, you give them this room to fail, right, and the psychological safety to make mistakes. In this case, the cofounder relationship ended with the two so, you know, we got a Slack message one morning, and they were like, the two of us, we were at a bar midnight last night with a bunch of our friends.

The CEO was, like, berating his cofounder, and then, you know, the cofounder resigned abruptly the next morning, so it's just not a good situation. That sounds really rough. Yeah. I would not wanna be in a situation like that. We do have a couple tips to help with building trust. So number one is trust people by default. Trust them until they lose your trust, not vice versa.

A lot of good founders tell us they do this because when you operate the other way around, like in the example Divya just gave, people end up feeling micromanaged, they feel not trusted, and all this negativity will continue to build up. If you say you're gonna do something, do it. If you're not gonna get it done, that's fine. Like, startups run super fast.

You will often have more things than you can finish on your plate. Mhmm. But if you're not going to do it, you should communicate early, often, and honestly. Create space for mistakes. You are going to make mistakes all the time, both you and your cofounder. So don't say things like, I told you so. It's important to learn from mistakes together rather than assigning blame when something goes wrong.

And lastly, the more time you can spend physically together, the better. This lowers the friction to asking questions, talking about the little things, and that can expedite making progress on both your startup and your relationship. Communicating in person can also help you learn or get a better understanding for the way your cofounder thinks, and that can help you build trust as well.

Thanks, Kat. Those are great. And,.

you know, they can kinda build a really good foundation for building a trusting relationship. So in addition to that underlying trust that you're gonna be continually working at, there might need to be some structural roles and responsibilities that are defined to keep decision making really fast. So on my first company, we made the mistake of trying to keep everything equal.

And there are many of you. There are four of us. Yeah. So, you know, we talked earlier about how splitting equity equally is a good idea, and, like, totally agree with that. The equity was not the problem. The first kind of yellow flag that came up was that we decided to not have any titles. Like, we all called ourselves cofounder. Gotcha.

And so in and of itself, that wasn't really a problem. But there's kinda two issues with this. One is, as a corollary to that, we tried to make all of our decisions by consensus. Consensus meaning you all had to agree on the decision to move forward. Yeah. For, like, any decision. So I don't think I even need to go into it with this group on, like, why that's a bad idea.

But at the time, it felt really equal, and it felt equitable. But also the the fact that we had no no titles was a little bit of a yellow flag because it was an early indicator that the team couldn't have hard conversations, and we couldn't make decisions when there was disagreement. Right? And so it was like the consensus and the lack of titles were, like, both kind of symptoms of the same thing.

You know, having to make decisions by consensus was ultimately disastrous. Like, would just spin. We would get stuck in gridlock. So let's talk about some ways to protect against this so you all don't repeat my mistake. Yeah. So as Divya mentioned, having clear titles or at least naming one person the CEO.

can certainly help. None of this co CEO stuff. It helps break ties and disagreement, and it's also just really good practice for having hard conversations where two people may not agree. Not being able to pick a CEO could be a sign that you're not able to make hard decisions together. In addition to titles, it's important to establish a few other things that can help with decision making.

So clear areas of ownership within the company. Who is the final decision maker for different types of decisions? This could be a different person and different functions, but it's important to know who it is. Mhmm. What happens if the other person disagrees, disagrees slightly versus strongly? Maybe the way you deal with it is different in those cases.

And finally, it can be helpful to set up a structure for accountability. So once you've made your decision, at some point you should check back in to see how that decision played out and whether anything needs to change in the process moving forward. Clear areas of ownership are very, very important in a startup, in a business.

And in addition, in order to make that work, it's also very important to understand each other's personality and communication styles. And so, you know, here are some tips on that. So one is keep a keep an eye on your on each other's mental health. Right? Like, likely neither of you is a mental health professional or anything like that, but you can kind of see some early indicators.

Is your cofounder burning out? Are they taking care of themselves? Are they starting to kind of be become more reactive or more emotional? Like, these are some things to look out for and catch early. Related, know how each of you reacts when you're under stress or when you're having a tough conversation. Kat, let me ask you a question.

When you're in a stressful, tough conversation, do you tend to attack or retreat?

I get very aggressive when I feel upset, so I would say attack. Yeah. Same.

I am I'm in the same boat. And this is something that I assumed was the case for everyone, but it's not. Right? Like, people have very different personality types. I've been in a few close professional relationships or cofounder relationships. If I'm very frustrated, I like you, I get very spun up. Like, I I get very communicative communicative. I crave engagement.

You wanna solve the problem right now. Exactly. Like, I wanna get into Like, right now. Right now. Right. It might not always be a good idea. Right? Like, we might be emotional, but I'm still like, I I wanna I wanna get through this.

Yeah. And I've worked with people that in those situations, like, they just kinda wanna withdraw a little bit. Like, they want to cool down. Maybe they don't want to engage with me because I'm being crazy. Right? But people sometimes just want a little bit of time to calm down. And I think sometimes when there's a mismatch in these styles, it can create a little bit of a vicious cycle.

It can self perpetuate. The more you wanna talk to them, the more they are not trying to talk to you right now. Right. And I might perceive that they don't care about the problem. So it's just important to know how people react in stress. A few other things. So does your co founder tend to speak up when they see a small problem, or do they bottle it up until there's a huge frustration?

It's important to know how big of a deal things are when someone brings things up. What environments are most comfortable for your cofounder to voice concerns? Is it, you know, like a walk and talk? Is it maybe over a meal? Is it in a scheduled structured one on one where there's time set aside for concerns?

Here's one that might be a little bit counterintuitive, but are you both comfortable praising each other and celebrating each other's wins? This can actually be very uncomfortable for people sometimes. Can you, you know, give each other positive feedback, and can you graciously accept positive feedback? Like, this can really build a strong cofounder relationship.

And lastly, will you feel attacked if your cofounder makes a suggestion about your work? Because as we talked about, everyone's gonna make a lot of mistakes. Right. Right? And everyone needs to be able to talk about these in a way that isn't emotionally loaded.

So figure out what that looks like for you, and can you do it without taking it personally? I definitely have an aggressive personality type when I'm stressed, so this is all really, really helpful stuff to think about. Let's wrap up by talking about a few habits and structures you can put in place to try to build and foster a productive cofounder relationship.

Number one, have regularly scheduled one on ones. Even if you talk to each other all the time, it can also be helpful to keep a list of ongoing topics that you add to as you think of things. And if there's something non urgent, just add it to the list instead of interrupting your cofounder every time there's something small.

In those one on ones, definitely reserve time for bidirectional feedback, both positive and constructive. Make this something that's part of the flow. Make it routine, not something that feels like a big deal that you dread all the time. Actually, have a great example. The founders from Kiwi Biosciences, which I talked about earlier, do something that I think is pretty cool.

When one person gives constructive feedback, the other person doesn't interrupt or argue. It's a really neat way to let someone vent without feeling like they have to defend why they feel upset. And I think it also helps with feeling like it's okay to talk about even the smallest things.

And that leads me to the next point, which is don't delay hard conversations and don't wait until things are a big problem before you mention them. The thing with problems is that they're easier to solve when they're small. Engage a coach or a counselor for tricky interpersonal situations. Don't feel bad about this. This is really helpful. I highly recommend it.

These coaches, it is literally their job to help people through these problems. They've seen it all and they can help you. And again, it doesn't mean you have a big problem.

Yeah. Because you're engaging a coach. Yeah. Right? Like you can you can tackle the problem while it's small. And we've talked about this next one a couple times already, but we do think it's really important.

Avoid personal statements and normalize failure. We've said this multiple times. Failure is going to happen all the time and you need to create space for that. So don't say things like I told you so. Don't say, hey, you always do this. You always x y z. These are personal attacks and you don't really want that in your co founder relationship.

Argue and get comfortable arguing, but you should know who ultimately is the decision maker. Disagree and commit. At some point, your team will have to make a decision unless you're, you know, trying to do the consensus thing. Don't do that. But once you've made a decision, commit and move on.

Just remember that at the end of the day, no matter what happens or what details you disagree on, you have the same ultimate goal. Right? You both want the startup to succeed. You're on the same team. Yeah. And you're doing something very, very hard and against the odds. So you wanna be marching in the same direction. Right.

So that wraps up our talk. Hopefully, you've gained either, you know, the desire to get a cofounder, more clarity on who your cofounder should be, or maybe more insight on how to work together with your co founder.