Is there the equivalent of “pre-martial counseling” for a potential cofounder?

1 points by Blakestr 6 years ago | 1 comment

I've watched what I could find on YC's take on this - I have a potential cofounder who :

- Has deep domain experience - Balances the startup's roles: He sales/marketing/networking vs me as technical/designer - Both share same profession & passion to solving this problem.

I'm fine with giving equal or near-equal equity (though I'm still looking at the 1 year cliff/4 year vesting concepts).

Mainly, what I have is a fear of commitment. I've been working on this solo for so long and that has been a mistake of mine. However, I can't make one mistake push me into making another and choose a bad co-founder.

Are there any other resources you recommend me check out? Risk redundancy and share with me something that might have slipped through the cracks.

seanrrwilkins 6 years ago |

A couple recommendations...

1. Get References: ask for references for previous employers/managers and coworkers. You'll want to focus those conversations around the potential co-founder's skills, work ethic, style, motivations and attitude.

2. Fear Setting: if you're not familiar, lookup "Tim Ferris Fear Setting." It's a good exercise to get all your fears and doubts and worst case scenarios down on paper so you can work through addressing them.

3. Operating Agreement: define and document a clear set of operating agreements outlining roles, expectations, separations procedures, etc. Hash it all out now so there's no confusion or guessing if things do fall apart.

4. Temp to Perm/Sweat Equity: if this person's truly motivated to be a cofounder with you, consider a short term trial period that's unpaid and non-equity with a clear set of tasks and goals. If they agree to it, and complete it successfully, they may have proven worthy to join.