Signs of Co-Founder Relationship Breakdown

Relationship breakdown between founders is the single largest reason[1] why startups fail.

Based on our experience working with co-founders at The Resolution Co., I’ve compiled a list of the most common signals that point to the fraying of a founding team relationship.

You can use the following list to self diagnose where you and your co-founder are — from early warning signs, all the way to critical late stages of breakdown. Instead of denying these signs, they can be embraced as a golden opportunity to plug gaps and uncover blind spots, smoothing the path to growth.

Early Stage Warning Signs are situations that your founding team can recover relatively quickly from, and establish frameworks to prevent them from recurring [See: Founding Team Conflict: Prevention is The Cure]. It is important to remember that even early signs of trouble, if left unaddressed, can snowball very quickly into much deeper and more complex problems.

Critical Stage Warning Signs manifest when early signs of trouble were either largely unaddressed or ignored, altogether. These types of warning signs usually point to a lack of trust within your team or a more serious issue that can directly threaten the health and prosperity of your company. At this point, neutral facilitators and mediators with extensive startup conflict experience are employed to diagnose, bridge and heal the founding team relationship.

Neutral facilitators and mediators help unveil the root issues underlying complex relationship patterns, create a safe space for dialogue and understanding, and anchor the new-found consensus into agreements and practices that strengthen your team moving forward.

Signs of Co-Founder Relationship Breakdown: Are you experiencing any of these?

Early Stage Warning Signs: The fraying of trust and safety

1. Believing you were wronged by your co-founder and not being able to communicate your grievance to them.
2. Complaining to your friends/family/significant other/etc about your co-founder’s behavior
3. Engaging in heated disagreements with your co-founder, where the stress of the situation lingers on for a significant period of time after the disagreement has ended.
4. Believing that your co-founder does not appreciate your contributions to the business.
5. Your co-founder does not treat you the way you prefer to be treated in a work environment.
6. Questioning your co-founders true business intentions and motivations.
7. Poor workload balance, where one founder is clearly doing more work than the other.
8. Lack of accountability within the team. (Does your co-founder actually do what he or she says?)
9. Does your co-founder become defensive or take it personally when making critical business decisions.
10. Is your co-founder not hearing you when you communicate your own needs? (i.e. how you prefer to be treated or what you prefer your working arrangement to be like)
11. Disagreements on the following topics:

• Idea ownership (Who’s idea is it?)
• Roles & responsibilities (Who’s the CEO/COO/Etc.?)
• Who represents the company (Pitching/interviewing/business travel?)

Critical Stage Signs : Judgments become manifest within actions that have the potential to sabotage the business

1. You feel that your co-founder does not truly respect you as a business partner (or vice-versa).
2. You do not trust one another with making important business decisions on your own.
3. You and/or your co-founder harbor deep resentment towards each other, which is becoming impossible to ignore.
4. You and your co-founder’s values do not properly align, which affects critical business decisions.
5. You and your co-founder’s ethics do not align, which affects critical business decisions.
6. You and your co-founder’s overall vision for the business does not align, which affects the way resources are used and how they prioritize their time & efforts.
7. Your co-founder is not accountable when it comes to performance of their business duties (i.e. reaching out to potential clients, completing important tasks).
8. You often try to avoid interacting with your co-founder (or vice-versa).
9. You consciously dread collective decision-making with your co-founder, since things soured the last time you attempted to do so.
10. Your co-founder is intentionally making it difficult for you to get work done.
11. You or your co-founder keep secrets or are not actively sharing with one another.
12. You are afraid of retaliation by your co-founder (push you out of the company, stealing IP and starting another venture, leaving for a competitor, etc.)
13. You’ve had the same conversation with your co-founder multiple times with no clear resolution or apparent change-in-action.

If you are experiencing any of the above and feel your startup is at risk, or want to prevent these types of risks from adversely affecting your startup, then reach out to us for a free consultation at The Resolution Co. (theresolutionco.com).

(Our free Founders Diagnostic is available here to help you gain clarity on your founding team issues and help us help you.)

[1] Wasserman, Noam. The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup. April 1, 2013. USA. Princeton University Press.