When selecting a co-founder or building a team, it’s crucial to consider how they handle uncertainty and whether their goals and values align with yours
While complementary skills are important, trust, shared values, and a strong working relationship are even more essential for a successful partnership
Other considerations are the roles and responsibilities a co-founder or teammate will take on and if you actually need to hire someone to perform a specific task
When selecting a co-founder or building a team, it’s crucial to consider how they handle uncertainty and whether their goals and values align with yours. Additionally, it’s important to clarify roles and responsibilities and assess whether hiring someone to perform a specific task is truly necessary. While complementary skills are important, these are even more essential for a successful partnership:
Finding the right co-founder often involves working on small projects together before committing to a startup, as this helps test compatibility and builds understanding of how well you collaborate under pressure. Once you identify a potential co-founder, it’s essential to have clear conversations about equity splits and who will take on the CEO role—challenging but crucial decisions to ensure a balanced and motivated partnership. After committing to build the company together, formalizing the relationship through legal incorporation and vesting agreements should follow.
A strong company culture is the backbone of a successful team, shaping how members collaborate, make decisions, and support one another. Start by identifying and clearly communicating your company’s core values, such as transparency, innovation, or customer focus. Incorporate these principles into daily operations, meetings, and hiring processes. Foster open communication, ensuring team members feel comfortable sharing ideas and feedback. Invest in team-building activities to develop trust and camaraderie while celebrating individual and team achievements to maintain high morale. A positive and mission-driven culture not only attracts top talent but also motivates your team to grow alongside the company.
Reflect on the reasons you want a co-founder or team. Are you seeking someone to share the workload, bring complementary skills, or provide emotional support? How will these qualities enhance the success of your startup?
Are your aspirations and approaches to risk and growth compatible? Do I need to hire someone for a task, or can I accomplish it on my own? Should the task be performed by the team or outsourced to a third party?
Evaluate your past collaborations and discuss important topics like equity and leadership roles. Are you both comfortable with the proposed arrangements and ready to formalize your partnership?
People tend to work for people they know and trust. Utilize your own network. NYU is a great place to start.
As a non-technical person, consider the areas in which you bring domain expertise. Often, before you need to hire a technical cofounder, you need to first validate your idea. Most of this can be done without any technical skills (See: “What tools can I use to build an MVP or prototype without coding?”). You are ready for a technical cofounder if/when you need to scale your business because demand for your solution is too much to handle manually or with low-code tools. Read this Y Cominbator guide on finding co-founders.
There’s no hard or fast rule, but Y Combinator advises that you consider near-equal splits for early cofounders. Founders tend to make the mistake of splitting equity based on idea-stage work, but most of the work of a startup is ahead of a founding team. Equity splits should maximize motivation and all co-founders should have vesting and cliffs built into their agreements.
