Finding someone to risk it all together with
One of the most defining aspects of a new company is its founding team. I’ve seen startups with a solo founder and teams of 4–5 founders working together. I think this is very subjective, but for me it’s clear that the best configuration is having two or three brains working together on a big issue.
I trust myself and my own ability, but I often find that having a counterpart as equal partner helps me make better decisions. I knew I wanted at least another founder, and at most a team of three. Four or more founders can lead to unmanageable discussions and I believe makes for less efficiency.
Looking back to when we founded Factorial, we made sure we had the proper balance of skills, knowledge and confidence. We’re Pau (Chief Technology Officer), Bernat (Chief Strategy Officer) and myself.
Pau is first of all my best friend. We share many things, spend way too much time together and finish each others sentences — it’s weird. He’s now Founder and CTO at Factorial.
Then there’s Bernat, also among my best friends, whom I met the first day of university more than 12 years ago. We saw each other grow professionally from very close. He is also Founder at Factorial and in charge of Strategy.
When UBER almost stole my co-founder
One of the risks of working with the best is that there is fierce competition for that sort of talent.
I first met Pau in 2011. We called him PauJS because he was like a Javascript god for us. I believe some people still call him that.
We brought Pau in to help at Redbooth with some features we never shipped (oh well…). He resisted our attempts at hiring him full-time, and he ended up going to San Francisco while trying to launch his own venture.
It turned out that his idea didn’t materialize into the business he had in mind, but on the way got some very attractive offers from Klout and Uber to work in San Francisco. Luckily for us, Uber screwed up his hiring due to the Visa application and he ended up coming back to Barcelona to work for Redbooth, eventually replacing me as CTO and becoming very good friends. I thank Uber’s CTO each time I remember this story :)
Built on a professional framework
I would assume most people that start a business with friends or family worry about what it could do to the friendship. I know I do. It’s one thing to to trust a person, but it’s a different story to know you‘ll be able to manage difficult circumstances, make tough decisions or keep a professional tone and face when required.
My long friendship with both Pau and Bernat guarantees that level of trust. But I also know we can handle each other in a professional setup. Pau and I worked together at Redbooth for a bunch of years, and Bernat and I shared the early days of itnig and Camaloon back in 2011/2012.
Disagreements happen all the time, and the fact that we all trust each other blindly and respect each other’s skills means that we all feel comfortable leaving a fight without getting our way. If one of us feels strongly about a topic and can argument for it well and make a case, the rest will respect that perspective and support it going forward.
The equity split
I get asked many times how founders should split their company’s equity. I’ve seen many different approaches to the matter, but we chose an extremely simple one, and one that brings things down to very rudimentary financial concepts.
We came up with a job description for each of us tied to a set of responsibilities, and we then set a salary for each of us. That salary should be competitive with the market, independent of the company’s cash balance. We then chose the amount that we needed to get in cash, and the rest would be our investment in the company. Stretch that over a four year period (typical startup equity vesting) and we had our numbers. If you’re putting some cash into the company, you should then add it to the invested “salary”.
Growing the team
We might have a very strong partnership between the three of us, but that’s not enough to get to our objective.
We’re growing the team with the first employees (we’re 6 people full-time, 11 including collaborators), covering product & engineering, marketing, sales and administration. Nailing the first hires are critical, probably worth a post.
We’ve also extended the team through our seed round investors. Where we felt the founding team lacked experience, we compensated it by bringing in entrepreneurs and executives in that field to invest in the company and contribute to its development.
Trusting your life
I always thought you should be able to trust your life to your co-founder. I mean, literally. Starting a business can be tough, and having people around who blindly trust each other can make all the difference.
In our case, we literally did it each time I went rock climbing with Pau and one had to secure the other.
What makes this team ideal for me is the combination of trust and skills. I know that Pau keeps our engine lubricated and our sails trimmed. Bernat has a unique ability to see beyond the horizon while I grab the tiller and keep the crew in shape for the next wave.
I hope our experience was useful. Please share any thoughts with a response or come find me on Twitter. Next week I’ll be writing about getting our first customers.
