8 Reasons I Love Having a Cofounder
Running a company is stressful and doing it alone is even worse. When Duma Works got started, like most startups, all we had was our idea and our brain power — sometimes on coffee, sometimes on beer, and sometimes on Redbull.
I’m actually at the Unreasonable Institute in Kampala at the moment, and there has been good workshops that lead to reflection and introspection. During one of those workshops, I was thinking back to the beginning of Duma Works, how crazy it was, and how lucky I was to have someone myself riding the ship out into the sunset with me.
Here are some of the times that came to my mind that I was super grateful to have a co-founder.
1. All the time.
I am an extrovert and can’t think if I am alone. In order to think, I need to speak and hash things out with other people. Therefore, having a cofounder is fairly instrumental to my thought process. Christine and I, when we first moved in Kenya, would just walk around town thinking out loud and observing how the idea for Duma Works might play out in this new market. We had tons of ideas, mostly centered around what cool marketing activities or merchandise we could make that mostly didn’t materialize. Still a good exercise and instrumental to the foundation of the company. Your cofounder is your brainstorming partner.
2. After my roommate stole all of my electronics from me while I was sick in bed, when my friend borrowed $100 and refused to pay me back, among other horrible stories where I lost money.
A series of unfortunate events, if you will. Graduating from college, joining the real world, moving to Nakuru, Kenya, and starting a company are not really at the top of my list of easy things to do. It didn’t help that I was apparently doing an excellent job surrounding myself by people who did not have my best interests at heart. When sh*t like that hits the fan, you really need an in-country best friend who is as broke as you to swear and yell with. Especially when society doesn’t have the infrastructure or desire to handle these touchy situations. You can’t run your company if you can’t get that anger and frustration off your chest. Your cofounder will hold up that punching bag for you to wail on.
3. When you are pitching your company for the first time.
Firstly, let me just say that having two people on a stage to pitch a company is usually better than one. The pitch becomes more interactive and dynamic. It’s harder for people to fall asleep when your pitch has a slight semblance to a tennis game. 😉 But also, I am a very improvisation-driven person. At the beginning, Christine and I did all different types of pitches — one minute pitches, 15 minute pitches, video pitches…you name it, we did it. Those different types of pitches require different prep strategies. My co-founder has a more formulaic approach where we memorized our pitch down to the last semi-colon — that was helpful for short pitches, whereas improv works best for long. I don’t think we would have succeeded without both approaches. Given that pitch competitions won us our plane tickets to Kenya, winning was very important to us. Your cofounder is the ying to your yang brain.
4. When you need to do something new that is kind of a huge deal.
When we were registering our company with the State of Delaware, giving people independent contractor agreements, and raising seed-round investor funds we usually had to do most of the paperwork ourselves. It takes a lot of chutzpah to say — yea, i’ve never raised a round of finance before but I can totally draw up this paperwork and nail it. It is definitely less intimidating when someone else is in the un-airconditioned room with you, holding up a glass of wine for you to have when you’re finished and convincing you the whole thing is just a big joke with no consequences. Sometimes you just need to drive blind and it’s definitely helpful to have a supportive peanut gallery. I’ve also been that peanut gallery for her and it was great fun. Your cofounder is your crazy road trip buddy.
5. When people say no to you and you want to cry a little on the inside.
How many times as a cofounder have you trekked into a far-away city for this one meeting only to receive a big fat no at the end. How much more awesome is it when you have someone by your side to laugh it off and plot for the next time. The problem when you’re just starting out is that you don’t quite know who is going to be helpful to talk to and who is not a good fit. Christine and I pitched DUMA to a friend of a friend at a US-focused Venture Capital firm about 6 months after we came up with the concept for DUMA (Kenya-focused), were still in the USA, and only had a business model. We got a lot of “constructive criticism” at the meeting, learned about why Africa isn’t a good investment, and were able to lean on each other as we moved on. Your cofounder is your spare self-confidence.
6. When you are in the office working late for weeks with no end in sight.
I find that usually when I’m working alone, it’s harder to motivate myself to take a mental breather and go shopping for remedial chocolate. Because it was always the two of us in the office until late, we could keep each other company and also keep each other sane as we plodded through the layers of unknowns: product development with no in-country tech team, sales management for a technology product that hasn’t been completed yet, structuring a legal entity in a foreign country, how to get job seeker sign ups, inputting data from thousands of hand written sign-up forms, and trying to navigate the murky business environment in Kenya. Your cofounder is your sanity check.
7. When something goes wrong and you refuse to forgive yourself.
As cofounder of a startup, more likely than not, you are the type of person with sky-high expectations for yourself. When anything goes wrong — your website goes down, you didn’t say the right thing at a meeting, you hired the wrong person, you didn’t budget enough time to an important meeting and arrived late, or you forgot to follow up with an important lead — it’s super important to forgive yourself, learn, and move on. I definitely was not that type of person initially. I would hold things against myself and wonder why I wasn’t more detail oriented or systems-minded, or smart. My cofounder forced me to look beyond the problem and think about how to learn from the situation. She was able to reframe my thinking from a micro-management level for myself to a macro-management level for the company. Your cofounder is your empathy for yourself.
8. When you need to travel for a meeting and want to turn it into an amazing road trip.
That happens sometimes — enjoy it more with someone else
And generally to make life more fun!
All in all, I really love having a cofounder. As you are thinking about whether or not you want to dive into a startup solo or with a partner, I hope these scenarios give you some food for thought.
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Posted in Founder Fridays Tags: cofounder, entrepreneurship, food for thought, Kenya, Startup
Originally published at dumaworks.com on July 17, 2015.
