Founder Marriage, Sleep, and Disputes
A year ago we started a Study Group of 200 founders, seeking to gain a deeper understanding of their journeys. This is what we learned.
Last summer, we set out to try and understand some of the more elusive parts of life as a founder. Every quarter we asked our Study Group — a pool of 200 Israeli founders all of whom have raised funds but not (yet) made an exit — about things like the early days of ideating and co-founder dating, mental health and self-care, support networks, and the relationship between co-founders. Most recently, we took things a step further and did a survey with the (romantic) partners of founders, to see what things look like from their perspective.
Rosh Hashanah seemed like a good time to highlight the main findings 🍯
1. 36% searched for a co-founder for over 6 months
How much time does it take to find a co-founder and an idea? Perhaps not surprisingly, given the nature of Israeli society, nearly half of respondents started on the journey as co-founders. But for those who didn’t, according to our Founder Matching and Ideation survey, the dating process took a long while…
2. Finding the one(s)
Relationships are complicated, and we were curious about Co-founder Relationships: how people decide to work together, what they argue about, and how they resolve those conflicts.
3. Nailing the idea
38% of respondents had an idea from the very beginning while another 38% spent over six months on the ideation process.
4. The co-founder impact
Beyond personal chemistry, most founders believe that the co-founder relationship has a direct impact on the success of the startup, with a 4.5 rating on a 5-point scale.
5. Agreeing to disagree
It seems that founders tend to worry about what’s outside of the areas of their direct control.
The main topics where co-founders opinions are split are product direction (a bigger issue for the CEO than other co-founders), managerial style (interestingly, most important to the non-CEO co-founders…), and the GTM strategy, which was the main concern for CTOs, perhaps because in many companies the CEO is in charge of GTM.
6. The mentor paradox
Most founders report that they have not had a significant mentor. And yet, over half mentor someone, and another 30% would like to, suggesting that while they haven’t benefited from mentoring themselves, founders clearly see its value. (Full survey on Founder Support here).
7. 60-6
Being a founder is all consuming — both positive and negative.
In our survey on Founder Mental Health and Self-Care, most reported working 60+ hour weeks and sleeping an average of 6 hours per night. For over half, being a founder changed their sleep patterns (presumably for the negative…)
8. Under pressure
Stress comes up as a significant factor in the survey, with 50% saying that stress impacts their performance and 30% saying that they are under too much pressure. Half of the respondents either see or want to see a mental health professional.
9. What the spouse has to say…
We recently surveyed the spouses of founders, to better understand how things look from their perspective. We found that career is a major protective factor — spouses who work full-time are more likely to be satisfied with the division of labor at home and with the level of support they give their founder spouses. In perhaps the strongest indication of the protective power of the spouse’s career, 75% of those who had a significant financial upside from one of their spouse’s startups, still work full time.
10. Sliding doors
And despite all the complexities (see full Spouses Survey here), the vast majority of spouses would say yes (to the startup) all over again — they wouldn’t want their spouse — the founder — to pick a different professional path.
