Four criteria for choosing a co-founder

For entrepreneurs, it can be hard to pick a co-founder. Here are four criteria to help.

Starting a company is a treacherous journey and one best not traveled alone. The stressors will be great, and whether you fail or succeed, the challenges will be never-ending. Take it from me, you need a co-founder for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is moral support (no one wants to be in a foxhole alone). But choosing the wrong co-founder can doom you from the start.

Selecting a co-founder can be difficult. Maybe you have a product idea, but you know you can’t do it alone. How can you tell if someone is worth partnering with? Or maybe someone pitched you a promising idea, but you’re not sure if you’ll be a good pairing. How do you know if you should take the leap?

With Pacifica (now Sanvello), I was lucky. I had an idea, and I knew I wanted to work with Dale Beermann from the start. When I look back, there were four key things that made it work.

1. Can you work hard together?

A startup is an immense amount of work. If you’re lucky, it’ll be long hours, for years. You need a staggering work ethic, and as co-founders, you need to work staggeringly hard together. Hard work is a basic requirement for future success. If it’s missing in either founder, you’re going to lose (and resent each other along the way).

Dale and I worked together for almost three years before creating Pacifica. He was the CTO of an education tech company, and I was a lowly UX designer. As memory serves, most of the product team was down in Texas for the SXSW Conference. After a day full of talks, we were having drinks and debating our newly learned product dogma when we got word that one of our web apps had a critical bug.

Dale and I left the festivities to get the app back up and running. As I recall, we were up for hours that night. Me tweaking the designs and him fixing the code. Back and forth. We weren’t done until it was right. At the time, it showed me that we would both prioritize “the work” over immediate gratification, but perhaps more importantly, that neither of us would take shortcuts. Something was finished only when we both felt good about it.

When considering a co-founder, ask yourself if you’ve ever worked on a sizable project together. Was there synergy?

2. Can you handle stress together?

With any startup, there’s going to be a constant barrage of challenges. In these times of duress, co-founders need to be able to work together. Instead of buckling under pressure, you need to help each other find clarity. If you devolve into blaming and finger-pointing, things will only get worse.

With Pacifica, I was the cynic and Dale was the optimist. We had disagreements regularly, but never raised our voices or cut each other down. There was mutual respect. This created a yin/yang type balance. On the product front, I’d push for the highest quality possible, and he’d bring me back down to earth as needed. On the business front, I’d be quick to point out when someone had ulterior motives, and I’d unfortunately be right more often than not.

Most importantly though, when one of us was down, the other was there to pull him up or temporarily carry the load. It’s harder to give up when it’s not just you. And in the rare times we were both dejected, we could commiserate, bonded in our plight. No one knew what this ride had been like except us.

We quit our jobs and didn’t take a salary for six months. We pitched and were rejected, again and again. We were threatened with a lawsuit. We were promised funding, but then the deal got increasingly worse. The investor tried to bully us into taking it. Ultimately, we walked away, while nearly broke. Looking back, it all worked out. But even at the end, Dale had to spearhead our acquisition while I was overwhelmed with my dog’s cancer diagnosis.

My point is I couldn’t have done it alone. You shouldn’t either. When considering a co-founder, ask yourself if you’ve ever been in a disagreement or pressurized-scenario with them. How’d it go?

3. Can you make something great together?

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times. The product needs to be great.

Before we started Pacifica, I was continually impressed with Dale’s talent as an engineer. I have a degree in engineering myself, but couldn’t spin up a server to save my life (I pivoted to design shortly after starting my career). I think Dale had a similar appreciation for my skillset (he had an affinity for a good user experience, but was no designer). That mutual admiration was important. As we embarked on the startup journey, I was excited to see what Dale and I could create together. And over the years, we were able to inspire each other and push one another to the brink of our capabilities.

In an early startup, everyone is a department of one, and yet every department needs to perform exceptionally. You won’t have big teams to elevate ideas (or hide behind). You and your co-founder need to do everything. I covered design, user experience, marketing, customer service, and quality assurance. Dale covered engineering, business, technology, networking, and fundraising.

In retrospect, we covered each other’s blind spots. And we were far better together than the sum of our parts. When considering a co-founder, ask yourself if you’re wowed by their talent. Are you excited about what you can make together?

4. Do you trust each other?

This rule trumps all the others. If you don’t trust your co-founder, you should not be co-founders. It doesn’t matter how talented or experienced he or she may be. Without trust, it’s not worth it.

Do you trust your co-founder ethically?
Do you trust them with your livelihood?
Do you trust them not to give up when it gets tough?
Do you trust them to do what’s best for the company and not themselves?

With Pacifica, there was a time when a much larger tech company showed interest in acquiring us. Dale and I met with the CEO for a long discussion. I thought it went okay. Afterward, the CEO sent a purchase offer to Dale and prefaced it with his belief that Dale was far more valuable to his company than I was. He wanted to make Dale the CTO, shower him with salary/stock, and leave me with peanuts. To his credit, Dale told me about it right away. And he was upfront with his lack of interest in taking the deal.

Ask yourself if your co-founder would walk away from millions if it was unfair to you. Mine did.

TLDR

It’s not always easy to pick a co-founder. When on the fence, ask yourself: can you work hard together, under stress, to make something great? If so, do you trust them?