How to Vet Your Potential Startup Co-Founder
Before building my startup, I thought that any hardworking human could become a co-founder.
During school group projects, I wanted to team up with the smartest, most hardworking, responsible classmates. I applied the same strategy to find a co-founder.
I learned that you cannot apply the same strategy because school group projects were short-term and had clearly defined prompts. Classmates had to work hard, be responsible, and be creative for a short period for a specific project with a rubric. Unlike school projects, in a startup, co-founders have to maintain the same qualities for years working on risky products and with unpredictable people.
Here are the questions that I wished I asked before committing to a co-founder:
Salary
What is the minimum salary that you can survive on? What salary would help you be more comfortable?
As a startup, you must preserve your burn. You must also make sure that your team is motivated to work hard.
I once saw a startup pay everyone the same salary despite being based in different locations, having different experience levels, etc.
The disparity led to resentment.
I also once saw founders want to get paid an amount that their other founders would never agree to or the startup could not afford to pay until a much later round.
Some people have salary requirements that require them to work in corporate. Be self-aware if you are not in a position to work on a startup.
If we were unable to fundraise and pay you for 6–12 months, would you be able to work full-time?
Fundraising is extremely hard and takes 6–12 months to close a sizeable enough round to pay consistent salaries.
I assumed that all co-founders would commit full-time after our acceptance into a prestigious accelerator. We secured enough capital to pay salaries after six additional months. Though most of the co-founders remained full-time, one co-founder started to commit only part-time. We later found out that they found outside paid employment and did not communicate with us about it.
This severely breached trust. We never fired him. However, I, who was paid nothing for the first six months, found it difficult to work with them moving forward.
Also, keep an open door for co-founders to discuss compensation at any time.
This incident happened because I did not give founders an open door to discuss compensation.
I assumed that the founder was scared that if they admitted to outside paid work, we would kick him out or they would lose their stocks or a similar consequence.
Contrary, if they discussed this with us prior, I would vote to let them keep an overwhelming majority of their stocks and get an initial salary cut when we could pay.
Founders' financial situations can change. They move to a new city, have a child, get married, etc. You want to keep a good co-founder and avoid losing them due to a changed financial situation.
Domain Focus Areas
What is the domain focus area that you are most passionate about working in? What is your ideal role?
What can you help with but you would not find very exciting?
What are you most skilled at?
Founders need to work on the areas that they are most passionate about and skilled at.
However, you need to also balance needed skills amongst your founding team.
In a previous team, founders who were very skilled in one area wanted to focus more on an area where they were less skilled.
Though founders need to develop their careers, founders also need to focus on the areas that they are best at.
In a previous team, though we had a balance of skills, most founders wanted to primarily work on the product.
Though we had a team who could come up with products, build them, and market them, the team only ended up excelling at coming up with products.
I learned that there is a big difference between having the skills and being motivated to utilize them.
Many people become founders because they want to build their idea. The problem with this is that some founders, even if they are technical or sales-driven, want to focus too much on the product. I have seen firsthand how operations, marketing, engineering, and other key areas get neglected. Make sure that your founders truly want to work on other areas that will help the product excel.
I suggest having a work period of three to four weeks where potential founders can work on whatever they want that they feel is important to the business.
You will be able to see what they naturally gravitate towards.
Work-Life Balance
Do you think that the company can be successful if everyone, including founders, worked an 8 to 5?
What are your expectations for other founders and team members?
Here’s my personal opinion:
I believe that founders should work more to make the company successful. They should go above and beyond, and constantly find ways to help the company become successful.
As a co-founder, I primarily worked on engineering and operations. Outside of the typical 8 to 5, I would create marketing content, find leads on Twitter, and listen to relevant industry Twitter Spaces and Clubhouses.
Team members should complete their expected work. Any extra work is appreciated but not required.
However, some of my co-founders did not agree. This caused major rifts that led to resentment and conflict.
They felt that I was crazy for working that much.
I felt that they were lazy for wanting the expectations of a non-founder team member.
What was the most intensive thing that you’ve worked on?
Being a founder is intensive. Those without a built work ethic will struggle.
Most people are well-intentioned. However, if they have not done anything intensive in their lives, they might become very uncomfortable initially and you might either become disappointed or classify them as lazy.
I saw founders struggle to keep up with the demands of being a founder. Though they were smart and responsible, they crumbled under the demands.
If working on a startup is the most intensive thing that your founder has done, you need to evaluate if you have enough patience for them to build up their work ethic or need someone who has built that work ethic already.
How You’ll Communicate (Including When You’ll Meet In Person)
What is your communication style?
You must meet your co-founders at their communication style. Communication is important but not everyone communicates in the same way.
It does not matter if co-founders have a different communication style than you but you should meet them where they are most comfortable.
If they are more heads down, you may want to only communicate through text day-to-day and schedule weekly 1:1s.
If they are more social and collaborate, you may want to have daily 30-minute office hours.
When should you meet in person?
It is easy to consider meeting team members in person as an inconvenience in our remote world.
At one startup, I did not meet my co-founders in person for over a year. neglected better communication for convenience. Bad call.
If you live in the same city, consider renting a small office or purchasing a WeWork membership.
If you live in different cities, plan to meet at least quarterly for the sole purpose of bonding with founders. Avoid meeting during conferences when the sole purpose is marketing the company, not bonding with founders.
About Me
I’m Jennifer. I’m a passionate developer with a product mind. I’m a serial entrepreneur in the web3 space.
I talk about web3, DAOs, improving the work environment, and how can junior developers level up.
Connect with me on:
Twitter: @jkim_tran
