Your closest partners
Founding a company with someone is a little like getting married. Jealousy, alone time, hardship, helping each other be better individuals; a lot of issues founders have are the same issues couples have. In fact, a lot of common advice for married couples is just as relevant for founders.
Just because you are friends with someone won’t mean you’ll make a great couple. The same is true for founders. I’ve seen many a team start as university friends that then quickly implodes. One of the biggest reasons for this is jealousy. Like it or not, when starting a company someone is going to get more attention in the press. This is especially true for larger founding teams. In fact, you should work out who’s going to be the face of the company early on. Having a single person in the spotlight sucks, but it’s the best way to tell a story about a company. Work out this issue early on or it can create a lot of resentment. Another aspect of this is to make sure you have an appropriate division of labour.
Make sure to have alone time from each other. Two years ago, our company spent a summer in California together. We lived together and worked together. After the three months were up, our team was sent scattered around the globe. Let’s just say that the month away from them was a breath of fresh air. There is such a thing as seeing someone too much, and when you’re living and working with the same handful of people every single day, it can cause issues. A good analogy is with work itself. One of the biggest causes for burnout is doing the same type of work too much. Switching to different tasks or activities lessens the chance of burnout. The same thing can happen with relationships: relationship burnout. During our time in California, my co-founders were the only social circle that I hung out with. To protect against relationship burnout it’s important to have other friend groups, with different interests.
One of the biggest differences between marriages and startups is that startups have added hardship from the very beginning. Startups are emotionally and mentally draining. Some of the hardest things you’ll go through as a company affect the founders more than anyone else. Your business model isn’t working out, fundraising is going too slow and looks bleak, etc; these are issues that can feel unbearably heavy. Co-founders are there to share the load. The absolute best reason to have co-founders is that they are in it with you. Make sure you talk to each other, you are each others’ greatest assets.
Do not take each other for granted. More than anything you should all be working to make each other better. Helping our employees with personal and professional development is a big part of our culture, but that all started with the founding team. Early in our company’s history we applied to YC and got an interview. Much to our disappointment, we didn’t get in. That moment was the catalyst for one of the most intimate conversations we ever had as founders. Before that point we thought we were invincible, but now we obviously weren’t. The specifics of that conversation are lost to history, but that was the first time we talked about what each of us needed to improve on as individuals. If we were going to keep on as a company, we had to be honest with each other, but more importantly we had to help each other get to where we needed to be as individuals. Your founding team sets the culture for your company. A dysfunctional founding team will build a dysfunctional company.
When it comes to your company, your founders are your closest partners. It’s not enough to be just friends. You need to be there for each other when no one else is. If you’re always striving to make each other better, then you’re doing something that far too many founders seem to forget.
Originally published on August 4, 2015.
