How to Find a Cofounder
Advice from founders on how they created their startup teams
Think of some companies that changed the world: Proctor & Gamble, Hewlett Packard, Ben & Jerrys. They all have in common at the heart of the business, a cofounding pair: William Procter & James Gamble, Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard, Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield.
What makes an excellent cofounding team? We asked founders worldwide how they met their cofounders and what advice they would give to entrepreneurs.
David Waring, Cofounder and CEO of FitSmallBusiness
Marc Prosser and I met at a previous company where we both worked, and in the early days of FitSmallBusiness, I spent more time with Marc than I did my wife.
A business partnership is like a marriage. This is why it was important for me to choose a cofounder that I knew very well. Because we had worked together for so long, we were both very confident that we could trust each other. We also had a good understanding of each of our unique working styles, as well as our strengths and weaknesses, and how they complement each other.
While not everyone may have a potential business partner that they have worked with for years, I encourage all entrepreneurs to spend significant time upfront getting to know a potential partner before committing to what is likely to be a multi-year working relationship.
Kat Hawley Cook, Cofounder of Market My Museum
I met my cofounder, Ryan Cook, on a dating app, A year after that, I married him and we started our business, Market My Museum. Our business specializes in applying for and landing the Google Grant — which is $10,000 of in kind ad money — for non-profit museums and managing their Google Ad campaigns.
Being married to your business partner can have a lot of positive and negative side effects.
It’s great because we have put a lot of effort into our communication skills as a couple. We know how to talk to each other. Having a partner that knows your strengths and weaknesses is crucial to developing a working relationship that can grow a business. We also spend a lot of time together, obviously, so it’s easy to talk about things that need to happen for the business.
This can also pose a problem, however. It is very important for us to be able to step out of business mode and have our relationship separate. It is also key to keep business decisions separate from our married life. No hurt feelings. No emotional damage.
Your business partner should be someone you respect, trust, and who brings a valuable asset to your company. Your partner should be someone you like and enjoy spending time with. Just like in a marriage, finding someone who has different skills than you can allow them to fill in the holes that you might be missing.
Anyone can do this, I just happened to find someone I respected, trusted, and valued so much, I wanted to marry him too!
Liz Wessel, CEO and Cofounder WayUp
I met JJ Fliegelman, my cofounder and WayUp’s CTO, at UPenn during his senior year (my junior year) through a hackathon. I only had taken a few coding classes at that point, so I wasn’t good enough to build a site on my own. However, I wanted to find someone at Penn who I could work with to build the first iteration of WayUp. So I “hacked” my way into the hackathon database, found JJ’s resume, immediately thought he’d be a great partner — and reached out.
At Penn, JJ and I bonded over our mutual frustrations over the process of looking for jobs and getting recruited by employers in college. After graduation, I ended up working at Google — first in Mountain View, and then in India. At Google, I saw from the other side how hard it is to recruit college students and recent grads because there’s so much quantity, and it’s hard to find great quality and diversity while providing a great candidate experience.
Between those two experiences, and from having developed a love of entrepreneurship from various small businesses I started throughout college, JJ and I both decided to quit our jobs and start WayUp together. The rest is history!
Dan Cunliffe, Cofounder of Pangea Connected
Here’s how I teamed up with our cofounder Chris Romeika.
Despite our shared obsession of snow sports, we didn’t meet on the slopes! We both cut our telecoms teeth at one of the largest mobile network operators in the UK. This was roughly 10 years ago, when the Internet of Things was just arriving on the technology stage — and it was gaining traction fast.
Chris and I saw massive potential in IoT. We realised that it would snowball into the massive industry that it is today, with its potential to bring efficiency, safety, and sustainability to every sector out there.
But large corporations can be hindered by their own size, and settle into routines that they’re used to.
Pushing for experimentation and innovation can be hard, and is often met with red tape — whether it’s lack of interest from seniors, lack of resources in a department, or lack of time with all the standard services to deliver.
Having watched him rise from Network Engineer to Head of Operations, I knew that Chris was more than capable of building innovative IoT solutions. And as Head of Partners and Strategy myself, I could see the need for IoT in every business that we dealt with; they just had nobody to provide it.
So Chris and I decided to take a risk. We left the company and struck out on our own, combining my network of contacts and business acumen with his sharp technical skills and experience delivering solutions; pouring everything we had into building innovative IoT & connectivity solutions and bringing their benefits to the businesses that needed them.
We began in 2014 with a couple of laptops and a vision. Now we’re bringing data-driven decision making, game-changing automation, and exciting new revenue streams to business across the planet.
We’re looking at opening a third office, with a 20-strong team and 200-strong partner base, winning 7-figure IoT deals for our partners and teaming up with the country’s top researchers to break new ground with 5G technology.
Like our namesake — the supercontinent that connected the world before separating into the continents of today — we’re connecting everything. And Chris and I still can’t quite believe how far we’ve come.
Each of us may be skilled in our own right, and we may not always see eye to eye; but the business is all the stronger for it. We balance each other out, and we couldn’t succeed without one another.
Daryl Bryant, Cofounder and CEO of Hudson
I met my cofounder of Hudson Integrated, Matt Mayernik, at college in 1998. We both have an entrepreneurial spirit and always had side hustles going throughout college. Every time we saw each other we’d talk about our next “big idea”.
After graduating, we lost touch and I started my first business offering web design services to local companies. I heard through the grapevine that Matt had started his own web development company. We decided to meet for coffee to catch up and what started as a simple get-together, turned into us deciding to join forces and leverage each other’s skillset.
Matt is a self-taught web developer and a true wizard, who can build complex, custom websites and systems from scratch. Matt loved that he got to focus on what he’s most passionate about while I focused on growing our business, becoming the face of our company. I’ve always been a people-person and my extroverted ways balanced Matt’s introverted ways, to help us grow and scale.
We co-founded Hudson Integrated in 2003 and have been 50/50 business partners over the last 17 years. In the early years of running Hudson, Matt focused on building websites for our clients, while I oversaw our sales and marketing efforts. We outsourced our accounting, A/R and A/P services and were able to successfully grow and scale the business.
From 2007–2012 we experienced over 500% growth in revenue and number of employees. It was looking back over those times when we realized our joint efforts have strategically helped shape the success of our company, which is now supported by the amazing team we have on our side. We both understand and realize that we could not have done this alone. Having a business partner that you trust and complements your skillset can be an invaluable asset to any business and allow you to scale it beyond what you might be able to do by yourself.
Looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing when it came to choosing Matt to be a cofounder with me. I now have other business ventures and have also strategically aligned myself with a business partner who I trust and complements my skill set because of the success Matt and I have had running Hudson Integrated.
Nicholas Prangnell, Creative Director & Cofounder of The Good Bamboo
My cofounder story started years before I took the plunge and founded my business. Sometimes the perfect business partner is someone you already know, and you can build from that existing relationship.
Finding a partner starts with a really honest appraisal of your skills, and a desire to work with someone better than you. But more importantly perhaps, find someone who you won’t want to let down, who can pick you up on those tough days. Start-up life is difficult, and it’s not always about skill — it is about determination and energy too.
Me and Eva had worked together, won awards together, and when the time was right we had the big conversation! Our skills complement each other perfectly (I’m more creative, she’s more organized) and we can trust each other to work together on the same project or consult independently.
Not only that but we’ve managed to deliver for clients whilst working totally remotely — we haven’t seen each face-to-face since about six months before we even started talking about founding a company together! I bet there aren’t many founders who can say they have that level of trust, and it comes from our time working together previously.
Now together we’re The Good Bamboo, which is tremendously exciting, and I’d never seen that coming six months ago.
Christopher Williams, Cofounder of RefillDrop
David and I met on a plane traveling from London to San Francisco. We were both students at Oxford University and were travelling to San Francisco as part of a trip organised by Oxford Entrepreneurs. During the flight we discovered that we shared several interests including a desire to reduce our plastic waste. RefillDrop was born a few years later after we received $150,000 to create an online supermarket with zero plastic waste. We achieve this by asking our customers to pay a deposit for their packaging and refund the deposit when we collect the empty packaging at future deliveries. We’re currently selling household goods and cosmetics, but we have plans to expand into groceries and other foods early next year.
David and I are complete opposites. David is very detailed orientated and focuses on sales. I like to think about high level strategy and am the technical guy writing the software. We both need each other to make this company a success and couldn’t do it on our own.
Kim Chan, Founder and CEO of DocPro
I started with no partner — the DocPro platform was built and solely financed by myself. There was a movie in my generation called “The Field of Dreams” and the motto was “Build it and they will come”. DocPro was initially built on this premises with the creation of more than 1,000+ commonly used document templates, but the traffic never came. The motto certainly does not work for the internet with billions of webpages competing for visitors.I was introduced by my staff to my co-working space neighbour Raymond, who happens to run a successful digital marketing agency. We spoke about how to market and in particular he guided me through the SEO process. It was like magic and the traffic has been growing exponentially ever since.Seeing the potentials of turning DocPro into a household name for legaltech, Raymond has since sold his marketing company and joined me as a partner at DocPro.Most legaltech companies are not successful because they are founded by lawyers who know nothing about marketing. Raymond complements my skill set perfectly, he is great at digital marketing and also takes care on the social media side. I can focus my legal team on doing the best documents for our customers.
Darren Litt, Cofounder and Chairman of Hiya Health
The key is to find a cofounder whose skills complement yours. When it comes to Hiya, my cofounder likes to do (and is great at!) what I don’t like to do and vice versa. He handles all operations and fulfillment while I handle marketing, strategy, and customer success.
An ideal cofounder is someone you have a pre-existing relationship with. For me, my cofounder and I met almost fifteen years ago when I got him his first job. We’ve remained friends since.
It doesn’t need to be a friendship necessarily (though that helps), yet it needs to come with mutual respect and trust. If you don’t trust and respect your cofounder, those issues will inevitably come up when you’re dealing with tough times.
Will Roberts, Cofounder of WeWorked.com
My Cofounder, John Holmes, and I met in 2001 while working as software developers for a small government contractor in Washington DC. During the time that we worked together, we were part of a small team who were purposefully cross-trained so that we could perform in almost any role should the need arise. It was through this experience of working together where we formed a bond, both personally and professionally, that we were able to identify each other as someone whom we could realistically go into business together with. However it wasn’t until eight years later that he pitched the idea to launch WeWorked in 2009.
More than ten years later, we have more than 50k users in 120+ countries. We have done the impossible. We are bootstrapped and profitable. Competing with big name timesheet companies like Replicon and TSheets with estimated annual revenues of $40M and $20M respectively. We had no blueprint, just a dream and persistence. Our partnership exists as a brotherhood. Our families are interconnected and regard each other as family. We spend holidays together and have traveled the world together. I can honestly say that founding this startup together was one of the best decisions I have made in life and wouldn’t change it for the world.
Phil Santoro, Founding Partner of Wilbur Labs
David Kolodny and I started Wilbur Labs in 2016. David and I met at Google. We both started on the same team, on the same day, back in 2013. We moved teams multiple times and sat next to each other for over two years. We realized early on that both of us wanted to start a company, since I had started a company before Google, and David had been working on several start-ups. David and I had a recurring dinner every week where we would grab food at the same restaurant and brainstorm startup ideas. Through this we realized we wanted to solve problems across multiple industries, and decided to launch a startup studio.
The biggest piece of advice I give others looking for a cofounder is to create a strong working history before you launch a company. Founder conflicts kill a very large number of startups every year. The best cofounders are people you know you work well with — because you have worked well before. By having a strong working history you will be able to gauge working style, values, goals, and other attributes that lead to a successful partnership. While it’s important to have complementary skills, it’s also critical you think alike where it matters and have a large amount of trust in each other. Having a strong working history also reduces risk significantly, since you already know upfront how you will work together.
Starting a company is a very long journey — many businesses require 5+ years to get started and 10+ years to create significant value. It’s critical you find someone who you will work well with over the long term, not just someone who has skills you don’t have today.
Samuel Hurley, Cofounder of NOVOS
Unlike others, I never set out to find a cofounder — I wasn’t even thinking about starting a business. Luckily, for me, staying in touch with a friendly ex-colleague, made me an entrepreneur and gave me a great cofounder.
Four years ago, while leading a team of SEO strategists at one of the top London-based digital agencies, I interviewed a 21-year-old college graduate from Norwich, Antonio Wedral, for a junior content strategist position in the company. Despite his age, he had an incredible knowledge of digital marketing, having completed projects for the local council when he was still in school. As he got hired, we worked on several projects together while enjoying a great working relationship.
Half a year later, I left the agency to work for a popular furniture brand, Made.com, as their SEO manager. I thought that would be the last time I’d see Antonio, but as we were members of the same meetup and WhatsApp groups, we kept in touch. Shortly after, Antonio left the agency job to work for a fashion publication, and we began to have in-person lunch meetings.. While still in full-time employment, I launched an eCommerce store selling men’s fashion accessories as a side hustle. It seemed natural to get Antonio involved as a part-owner due to his vast experience in retail and fashion. However, we ended up working on the idea together as cofounders — this marked the beginning of our first business together. I’d advise that it is a good move to start a small project with someone to gauge their compatibility before diving into a big endeavor like running a company together — in my case, it wasn’t planned.
I took some freelance gigs to fund the marketing of our eCommerce store, but interestingly, the freelance work started to take off and become more regular. One day, eating the smallest, most overpriced burger for lunch on a boat in Paddington, Antonio expressed his thoughts about expanding the freelancing into an actual agency. Initially, I was against the idea due to previous bad experiences at my old agencies, and it seemed a very saturated industry. However, we started to build out the idea and came to an agreement around the business proposition and how we could stand out and differentiate in the saturated market. Within six months, Antonio had quit his job and moved out of London to work on the agency full time. I left made.com at the end of 2018 to work on the agency full time as we acquired more clients.
Within four years of meeting, including a year where we didn’t work together but kept in touch, we are now cofounders of an eCommerce agency that has worked with 80 eCom brands, employs a team of 15 very talented professionals, has won international awards, and is aiming for a turnover of £1 million in the coming months.
Eric Lu, CTO and Cofounder at Kapwing
I met my cofounder, Julia Enthoven, from working together at a previous company. I think the best relationships for cofounders are those where you have a shared work experience and a shared set of values. This is something that Julia and I both value and see as an important part of our working relationship.
It’s definitely hard to meet a good cofounder. I spent many months meeting other people in the startup scene, hanging out at meetups, and working from different coffeeshops to find someone who was also interested in technology and had the same goals for building a company.
You want someone who is overall very similar in terms of skills and values so that you get along well, but not completely the same. Julia is our CEO at Kapwing, and her skills of building relationships, hiring, managing our operational teams, and thinking about the product direction of the company is a good compliment to my strengths in design and engineering.
Andrea Barnhill, Cofounder and Director of Ops at Socratik
I actually knew my cofounder prior to starting a business, as we had met in college and been friends for years. But that is not why I initially reached out to pitch the idea of starting a business as cofounders.
I thought about what skill sets I needed in a cofounder in order to start a successful SEO agency. My strengths are in project management and operations; I am able to anticipate what clients need and can grow and motivate a team to produce quality deliverables and accomplish great results for clients.
However, I was only a few years into my digital marketing career at the time, and was lacking expertise and experience to come up with creative SEO strategies based on the unique needs of businesses. I knew I needed top SEO talent, and someone that had a diverse background in SEO who would give us a competitive edge over other potential partners.
We are 2.5 years into running our SEO agency and our skillsets have complimented one another and enable us to function as a strong team. And, of course, having been friends for years and having established trust certainly helped take out any uncertainty that most cofounders may have.
Dr. Edmund Farrar, Cofounder Oto Health
I met my cofounder George around 10 years ago at medical school. We quickly became good friends and throughout our time training to be doctors envisioned starting a tech business. However the right idea never came along and in our penultimate year we both joined the military — he the Royal Navy and I the Royal Air Force. We spent 5 years of service at various locations around the country, and during this time were exposed to many servicemen and women with hearing damage and tinnitus as a result of their job. This gave us the idea for the company, and Oto Health was born.
It is so important to get on well with your cofounder. George and I were good friends before working together, and therefore knew that we would work well as cofounders. You’ll be spending a lot of time together, and you’ll need to be able to resolve issues fairly and without conflict. Disagreements are inevitable, but it is how you deal with these disagreements that will demonstrate your strength as a team. Therefore I think it’s really important to work together first, or find someone that you have worked with previously.
Rebekah Carr, Cofounder of Sweet Bay Design & Realty
My business partner and I co-founded a Real Estate and Interior Design company in Wilmington, North Carolina. HAVEN Realty Co and Sweet Bay Design are sister companies under one roof. We work together to help our clients buy, sell, build, and restore real estate in our surrounding areas. Colby and I met selling real estate together and our personalities complimented one another immediately. Starting a business was not on our radar at the time, but we kept growing in sequence with one another and the idea evolved. Our goals and ideas were in alignment and we opened our doors a little over a year ago. We have had great success with each of our respective businesses being able to grow 40–50% over the past year even through a pandemic, not to mention the personal support we have been able to provide one another! I wouldn’t be in business with anyone else.
Finding the right cofounder is paramount to your success. You don’t want to find someone who is just a “yes” person, or thinks exactly the same way as you do. You want to find someone who will push you intellectually and professionally, while also bringing unique and outside perspectives beside your own to everything you do. The growth you will experience by being in business with the right person is one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Colby is not only my cofounder, but also my work wife, soul sister, and chosen family at this point. We want the best for each other and that absolutely comes through in how we run our business.
Ryan Sagers, Cofounder of EddyHR.
My cofounder, Travis Hansen, and I have a unique story that I thought I’d share.
In 2003, Travis was playing basketball for BYU. He was the best player on the team and would eventually be drafted by the Atlanta Hawks into the NBA.
At the time, I was about 10 years old. My family had courtside seats to the BYU basketball games, and so I got to see Travis play up close. He was my favorite player. I started bringing big signs and posters to the games that said things like, “Travis Hansen for President.”
He took notice. After games he’d come over and give me a high five. Over time we eventually became “friends.” Over the next few years while he played professional basketball (in the NBA and in Europe) we stayed in touch. He’d hold summer basketball camps every year, and I’d attend. Our friendship grew.
Flash forward about 15 years and I’m just finishing my degree at BYU and looking to start a company. I have some ideas and go to Travis for mentorship and help. By now, he’s retired from playing basketball and has started a few businesses of his own.
Eventually, Travis and I decide to work together and start a new company. After months of market research, customer interviews, and product analysis, we land on the idea for EddyHR.
We’re now about three years into this company together and it’s been an awesome ride!
Who knew that my 10-year-old self would form a connection with a basketball superstar that would eventually lead to the founding of an HR software company?
Pretty crazy world.
Lori Cheek, Founder and CEO of Cheek’d
After I came up with the idea for my dating business back in February of 2008, I walked around in circles for over a year trying to figure out how to build my business and 2 guys came on board to help me (I couldn’t have made a worse choice of a team in my life). They both had the same skill set, are no longer involved in my business and they owned nearly 20% equity. I had to let one of them go early on — the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life — in one of our first investor meetings, he didn’t know our numbers AT ALL and made a fool out of us. Then I saw him write his phone number on a piece of paper one day and slip it to a girl as he was leaving a meeting (our dating business solved this problem by giving singles a card to hand in a situation just like that). And the other one??? My Shark Tank (yes, the big show on ABC!) application took nearly a year from the day I applied until the show actually aired. It was an exhausting, stressful and lengthy process. I remember filling out what seemed like a 50 page hand-written application. Once I made it onto the next level, another 25 page application came through. Then a request for a video interview followed by what seemed like weekly calls with the show’s producers. Every time I thought I was finished, there would be another stack of paperwork to fill out or some other kind of challenging task. In the middle of it all, I’d gone to my partner to see if he could help out a bit. As soon as I’d told him what I was applying for, he told me there was no chance I’d get on the show because of the tens of thousands of people that apply every season. I remember thinking, “but I’m Lori Cheek!” One year later, my epic episode aired. That partner is no longer part of Cheekd. If I’d known what I know now… Team is EVERYTHING. The technical aspect of my business has been one of the bigger challenges I’ve faced and it’s the one thing I definitely would have approached differently from day one. I needed a CTO, which brings me to the missing link (my new cofounder) from all the years before.
Back in 2010, we’d hired a developer, Roger, off of NYC’s Craigslist to help fix our broken website (the best thing my first partner did for my business). Years later before I found myself flying out to LA to film (my last resort) my brutal and dreaded, yet coveted spot on ABC’s Shark Tank, Roger (my Craigslist developer from so many years before) came to me and said he’d been watching my hustle, hadn’t stopped thinking about my business and wanted to get involved. He ended up buying out my old partners, became my CTO and has helped facilitate and finance the new face and technology behind the new Cheekd. Roger became my business partner, my investor and my ANGEL in more ways than one.
