Strategic Guide: Finding the Right Co-founder for Your Startup Success

In the world of startups, the most repeated question arises after funding is, do we need a co-founder or not? If yes, then how to find one?

Mon May 9, 2022

"Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people." — Steve Jobs

If you look at the top 50 companies by valuation, you will notice that they all have co-founders. Having a co-founder gives you someone not only to split up taxes with but someone to split the emotional burden of starting a company with.

Most importantly when you go for the funding, they will ask for the co-founders. They will ask for one at least one co-founder and ideally three. They check the compatibility between the co-founders and whether they can build and sell the product or not. It shows them that your startup is reliable and trustworthy.

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Why a co-founder?
The right time to find a co-founder
How to find a co-founder for your startup?
Conclusion

First, let’s talk about why one should have a co-founder at all and the importance of having them.

Why a Co-founder?

1. To Increase the Productivity

You can get more work done if you have someone to divide the work with and can get much better results if you have a co-Founder who has a different set of skills. There must be someone with whom you enjoy discussing ideas so you can brainstorm and come up with better ideas and you could have someone to talk to you about potentially bad ideas.

2. To Build Moral Support

A startup is an incredibly intense journey and is great to have someone you can lean on for support during the tough times. It is best when both co-founders kind of balance each other out.

In this case, if one founder is having a bad day and they have become a little pessimist about the startup. The other co-Founder may boost up a little bit and keep them going. So, the best co-founding relationships are when you can even out some of the highs and lows of the emotional roller coaster of the startup.

3. Portrays the Image of Reliability

Whenever a company has co-founders, they tend to build the image of trustworthiness. They generate a positive environment and contribute with many new ideas and support each other during hard times.

Not to forget that the funding committee usually asks for co-founders. They believe that co-founders together will have a wider network and could utilize them for growing up their companies. They also search for evidence that whether the members are going to stick together for the long run or not before funding.

4. Share the Responsibility and Burden of the Startup

They will share the workload and other factors like initial investment, ownership, etc while building up the startup. You could get the productivity increased by hiring people but you don’t get that same emotional support that you would receive from a co-founder.

Since anyone who is working for you, will be your employee and they are not as invested in the success of the startup as you are. You can’t be as open with them about the company as you can be with your peer and that’s what you could get from the right co-founder.

Hence, it’s always important to remember these points when you are starting a company and wondering whether you should have a co-founder or not.

The Startup Founder Mindset

What is the Right Time to Find a Co-founder?

Well, in this case, there is not a particular right time to find a co-founder. If you are going to start a company right away and you start searching for a co-founder. Instead of rushing into it, you should wait and search through your mutual connection while continuing with your work.

Most founders met at their schools, colleges, or where they work and some even met their founders through a mutual connection. You can get your founder during the initial stage or while expanding your markets, it is your choice.

The best example we can take is the CEO of Dropbox, Drew Houston. He came up with the idea of putting all the data online as he had lost all of his important data. He applied for the funding to build his company. But they declined it as he didn’t have any other founder rather than himself.

So, he started building the prototype and searching for a co-founder as well. During this time he met with his classmate ‘Arash Ferdowsi’ and together they shared the same vision and become co-founders. Again they re-applied for the funding and this time they received it. Read more: How to Turn Yourself from an Employee to an Entrepreneur?

Important Steps to Finding a Co-founder

1. Ability to Handle Stress

Search for someone who can deal with the stress effectively and also guide you in dealing with the stress eventually. Startups are incredibly stressful and intense experiences and a great founder should be able to support you through those.

2. Understanding the Goals and Values

One should always look for someone who understands your goals and values and be compatible with each other or else it will lead to conflicts. They must share the same vision as yours and together bring the best to the table.

3. Look for the Right Set of Skills

It is important to have a co-founder who has the right sort of skills to help you grow the company and usually that means someone who has a complementary set of skills to you. Like if you are good at building the product then ideally you should have a co-founder who is good at sales and marketing or pitching ideas to the investors.

4. Search Through Your Social Circle

The first way to find a co-founder is to get support from your personal contacts as you know them closely. You can take the help of your social media networks and you could ask your mentors for finding your co-founder.

5. Start Attending Startup Events and Conferences

This is the best place to start looking for your co-founder as there you will meet people who have the same state of mind as yours. You will get to meet people who have different expertise in different areas and while discussing it you will understand them better.

6. Join a Business Networking Group

One of the best ways is to join companies that will assist you in building your business network. It will increase your chances of visibility as well as increase your horizon of meeting people who are like-minded.

7. Take the Help of the Founder’s Matchmaking Sites

You can take the advantage of matchmaking sites to find the right founder for your startup. Though some people are skeptical about these sites but think of it as a beginning step to finding your founder. You can start by meeting them or taking their interviews over a phone call or through Skype. Here, is the list of some matchmaking sites that could help you in this process.

Reddit – You can post a question about who wants to become a founder in your company and wait for their answers.
LinkedIn – It is your personal and business network that will guide your venture. You can join various groups and start looking for people who share the same vision or have the skills you need.
CoFoundersLab – It is a network of more than 30000 entrepreneurs and mentors. You can sign up for free and start searching their network.
Tech Co-founder– It is basically for them who need founders with coding or software developing skills.
Start Hawk -.This website is also getting popular among entrepreneurs who are go-getter types and search for the corresponding kinds of people.
Startup Weekend – They follow an event-based process where one person launches their product and wait for the people to connect with them.
FounderDating – Here, leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors connect and aids in scaling up their businesses.

Bottom Line

I would like to conclude this by showing you some great examples of having a co-founder and their importance for a startup. When you will look at the list of full successful startups in the history of Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.

They all had co-founders when they started. However, people forget this point because when you think of these great iconic companies, you associate them with a single person usually the CEO who is famous and a bit of a celebrity.

And that is why whenever you think of Apple you get the picture of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates from Microsoft. Over time it’s indeed for one person to drive the company and become the figurehead and stick out for a company for a longer period.

Therefore, this is why we remember those people but we’re talking about the earlier stages of starting a company where all of these founders had co-founders, and together they shared their vision, and goal, and worked together while being dependent on each other.

Dr. Anu Khanchandani
With over two decades of experience in the software technology arena, having worked in multinational and SME companies in India, USA and Singapore in the capacity of programmer to CTO - I felt now was a good time to give back to the world what I have learnt in this journey. Even if it ends up benefitting a few of my readers by giving them insight or solving a technical issue, I think I will have achieved my mission!