The Ultimate List Of Questions To Discuss With Your Future Co-founder
Once an employee or an employer, we all know about tricky questions and tests in the hiring process. But are you sure you are well prepared to choose the right business partner? This person or several potential co-founders might be your colleagues, friends, or even beloved ones.
However, building a startup is not the same as building products inside a corporation. And knowing your potential partner for years also doesn’t mean you will get what you expect in terms of business growth.
This list of more than 100 questions to ask potential co-founders might help even more than any MBA course on your way to becoming a unicorn.
I divided these questions into categories: Personality and Motivation, Skills and Roles, Business and Management Principles, and Relationships Between Partners. OK, let’s do it!
Personality and Motivation
1. Why do you want to build our product?
2. Why don’t you want to build this product inside the Tech Giant?
3. Are you sure you want to start our own company?
4. What motivates you so you feel like you won’t give up in several months?
5. Why do you think this company may succeed?
6. What do you do with your free time?
7. How do you deal with stress? Can you remember the most stressful situation in your life?
8. What was the biggest challenge in your life so far?
9. Have you ever failed at anything? If so, how did you handle it and what did you learn? (If the answer is “no”, think twice before continuing the questionary!)
10. What do you think I’d be most surprised to find out about you?
11. Are you ready to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week?
12. How do you commit your time now (work/family/hobbies/friends, etc.)?
13. Do you feel like you are a process lover or a result-driven person?
14. How do you deal with conflict? Compromise? What was the biggest conflict in your life?
15. What do you consider ‘unethical’?
16. What makes you feel most ashamed?
17. When did you feel eternally happy for the last time and why?
18. When and why did you cry for the last time and why?
19. What are your personal financial situation now?
20. Are you ready to make our company the primary activity for you, or will you be ready at some point (what is the expected time commitment now, in six months, two years, etc.)?
Business and Management Principles
1. How do you see the ideal product we want to build? Who will benefit from using the best version of it? How will they do it? In what geography?
2. Will any of us be investing cash in the company? If so, how is this treated? (i.e. Debt? Convertible debt? Different class of shares?) What’s the equity split and why? Are we both comfortable with the reasoning behind this decision?
3. Are you ready to work full-time? If you’re not able to go full-time now, under what circumstances would you be able to start working on our idea full-time?
4. Are we both going unpaid at the beginning to reinvest the full potential revenue?
5. Are we going to bootstrap our company or we want to take external money? If fundraising, from whom? What money you are not planning to take if there are any limitations?
6. Where do we want the business to be registered?
7. Who do we think the first five hires will be?
8. How much equity are we allocating for future employees?
9. What values do we want to instill in our employees? Name 3–5 you assume the most important.
10. Who is going to be CEO (and why)? Are we both comfortable with this?
11. Do you need to be encouraged? How are you often encouraged by someone?
12. What is your ‘love language’ in the work space? In other words, what is your form of appreciation? Words of encouragement, public recognition, acts of service, gifts, etc.
13. Describe yourself as a leader. Describe yourself as a manager of people.
14. Have you ever hired and fired people? If yes, do you remember any stories about these processes?
15. What is your biggest business achievement you are proud of?
16. Do you have role models in business?
17. What are your personal goals for the startup (i.e. a sustainable business that is spinning off cash and running it forever or high growth and some type of liquidity event)?
18. How would you define its ultimate success for you? (Revenue, exit, personal pride, etc.) Would you prefer to sell our business for $5 million? $100 million? Are we waiting for the billion-dollar exit or an IPO?
19. Is there a part of our plan that you are unwilling to change (i.e. the product being built, the market being addressed, or some other aspect of the company)?
20. What do you think our biggest risk is with this venture?
Skills and Roles
1. What are your strengths and weaknesses as a leader and co-founder? What were your strengths and weaknesses as a specialist at work?
2. Can you make a list of hard and soft skills and show it to me?
3. What is something you are absolutely sure you are capable of?
4. What task will you never promise anyone to complete?
5. What are some of the well-known products you could have made by your own or with a small team and what are some you have no idea how to built? Why have you chosen these ones?
6. Talk about times you did something you had never done before. How did it get handled and what was the outcome? (This could be technical or non-technical, f.e. this could be scaling a company, building a website, organizing events, etc.)
7. What do people say is your “super power” or consistent contribution on the team?
8. What is something you’re currently working on in terms of improvement?
9. Have you ever missed a deadline?
10. What professional skills do you appreciate in others?
11. What is the biggest size of a team you have ever been leading?
12. What kind of a person you are not going to hire and why?
13. What do you think you are best at?
14. Do you think you are a creative person, a visioner?
15. Do you prefer to keep operational issues in order rather than inspiring employees with big ideas and huge plans?
16. What areas do you see yourself definitely wanting to be a point person for the first 12 to18 months?
17. What are the areas you know you’re not particularly good at?
18. How will decisions get made? What areas/decisions would you like to have the final say?
19. What are the strongest and the weekes skills you suppose I have? What is the role you think will suit me perfectely?
20. In case I am sick/not available, do you think you are able to substitute me?
Relationships Between Partners
- Do you feel comfortable telling me that I am wrong from your point of view?
- What makes you most excited to work with me?
- What is the ‘super power’ quality that you most value in me?
- What concerns do you have about working with me? Are there any issues I should be aware of?
- Who in our partnership is going to be the front-facing person to the public or to investors? In situations where you had to have just one “face” of the company, who would that be?
- What is missing between us in terms of skill set or expertise that you think we need to succeed?
- How are we splitting equity?
- What if one of us put our own funds into the company, and that gave that person more equity overall? Is that okay? Or do we want to intentionally maintain the equity split we agree on?
- What if one of us will want to leave? What will happen to their equity? Is there a vesting period?
- What if we didn’t have enough funds to pay salaries for everyone for a while? How long would you or your family be able to survive? Would you need to get another job?
- What are some 3 or 4 deal breakers in terms of working together?
- What if we fundamentally disagreed on a key decision? How would we resolve it? Let’s think ahead about the process we would follow.
- Is there someone we want to put in place to be our trusted person who could help us process this disagreement?
- What would be our key communication rules for our partnership? (ex: never speak for the other person, never criticize/correct the other while in a pitch meeting, always be transparent with key conversations when the other person was not present, etc.)
- Can we commit to an ongoing check-in to openly and honestly discuss our partnership on a monthly basis? The purpose is to discuss things before they become big problems.
- Is there anything I should know about you before we started working together? Have you ever been fired, gone to jail or done anything that would materially impact your time with the company?
- Do you sit on any boards of companies and do you have any conflict of interest with our project?
- Is there a “no-compete” clause that is active at this time?
- Do you like my jokes and my sense of humor?
- What will you never forgive me?
This list may be extended, and the core idea is that you should have several conversations about essential things in your future journey.
Don’t forget, you both are searching for a partner, not an employee. In order to really understand how you work with someone, you have to actually work with them. Once you’ve agreed you’re aligned on a lot of the issues discussed, start a pet project, go pitch it, and get the first customers. If this works, then you’re probably ready to go “all in” together.
Do you run an innovative tech startup? We are investing in early-stage revenue-generating software startups across the world and would love to hear from you! You can reach us at info@leta.vc.
