How I Found The Perfect CoFounder

Chloe Cohen
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read

When my CoFounder, Jocelyn and I met in mid-2015, we were not at a networking event or even thinking about starting a business. We were just two girls who’d moved to San Francisco with our engineer husbands. Introduced by my brother-in-law, we met up and discovered just how much we had in common. ‘Southern Hemisphere sisters’, now on the other side of the world in San Francisco — both having studied marketing and communications, both of us loving to do things like craft, bake and garden.

Jocelyn and I exploring the California Cheese Trail

Fast forward a few months to Thanksgiving — after celebrating together with friends, we began throwing ideas around. One of these that got us both really excited, was the idea of a subscription box where customers could bake fun and creative desserts. It made sense to us because we both enjoy baking homemade sweet treats to share and we felt that others would enjoy that experience too. Our husbands were immediately excited by the idea and strongly encouraged us to find a time to explore it further — and SoBakeable was born.

Life kind of handed us this one. Neither of us knew it at the time, but just as you pick your partner for life — finding your business partner is like a marriage. These days, we spend more time with each other each day than we do our husbands.

Jocelyn and I at the SoBakeable booth at MakerFaire in San Mateo

Starting a business has many challenges — some which could easily overwhelm us, but it’s helped immensely to have each other’s support, as we lean on each other to get through it.

However, we do have our differences:

I am organized, writing lists, managing schedules and working complicated spreadsheets. I have my laptop with me everywhere I go, dragging and dropping things in Sketch and tapping at the keyboard to get the website looking just right.

Jocelyn is chatting away, exciting anyone and everyone she meets about SoBakeable. Befriending every Uber passenger or driver, gym member and person that she meets — sharing our story and our baking boxes with others.

While starting a business can be stressful at times, we have learned to manage the ups and downs together, mostly by just having a good time.

Anyone who has seen us in action, doesn’t even need to know our story — they can see us living it. We’re similar in so many ways, but it’s the differences in our personalities and varied skill sets, that make us a perfect match.

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