31 - Co-Founder Mini-Series - What Is A Co-Founder?
I’m so excited to write this mini-series! I am working with my dream Co-Founder in building Mayday, the person I’ve long dreamed of starting a business with. I’m someone who seldom gives himself 10/10. This is a rare exception. This mini-series shares my Co-Founding story and learnings.
Last year I went through two parallel decision processes in relation to starting up again. The first was the sequential process that I documented in the early posts of this blog: deciding whether and when to start a new startup, what that new startup should be, and its culmination in the emancipation of expert knowledge as the mission for Mayday. The second process was deciding who I wanted to create that startup with. In this mini-series I will cover the process I went through:
Deciding why I wanted a Co-Founder
Deciding what I wanted/needed in that Co-Founder
How I went about finding them
How we approached our Co-Founding agreement
But First….What Is A Co-Founder?
I will use the term Co-Founder, which is simply the plural of the term Founder for these purposes. It’s important to be unambiguously clear what I mean by a startup Co-Founder. I assumed this would be an easy task; the terms “Founder” and “Co-Founder” being well established in popular vocabulary. A quick search on Google should provide an unambiguous definition of what a startup Co-Founder is. I was wrong. My search yielded the following definitions:
Any individual who starts a company with the help of other people
A person involved in the initial launch of a startup company
A member of the executive team who played a role in the founding of a company
A person who has the initial idea and establishes a business
YCombinator stipulate that you need to own at least 10% of the shares of the company to be considered a Co-Founder
None of these are mutually exclusive. And you could stitch them together to form some kind of Frankenstein’s Monster aggregated definition. But that’s not the point. They’re all second order factors that positively, but not perfectly, correlate with being a Co-Founder. They’re not the first order root cause.
My Definition…..
….of a startup Co-Founder is:
“Someone who shares the ultimate responsibility for first navigating the startup to a sustainable business”
Parenthood provides a great analogy. You could substitute “child” for “startup” and “life” for “business” in the above definition. The three key terms in this definition are “ultimate responsibility”, “sustainable business (or life)” and “first navigating”.
Sustainable business (or life)
Your child needs to learn how to leave; how to provide for their own subsistence and safety needs. Then beyond that, how to find fulfilment, joy and flourish in the world. What I like to think of as person-world fit.
The goal of any startup is to discover a sustainable business. The business needs a way of covering its costs. It needs an enduring way of delivering value to customers so that it can perpetuate as an organisation. The startup will search for product-market fit - an attractive market which the startup’s product or service is capable of satisfying.
Ultimate responsibility
When it comes to your child’s overall development, the buck stops with you as a parent. There is no higher authority to whom you can defer responsibility. Parenthood is not an island. You and your child will get support from their teachers, other family members, childcare and health services, amongst others. They will help with both additional capacity and the development of specific skills. But meta responsibility for your child finding person-world fit lies with you as parent(s), alone.
In a startup, you can have a team, investors and advisers. You can lean on them for support and delegate specific remits. But meta responsibility for discovering product-market fit and a sustainable business is the responsibility of the Co-Founders, alone.
First navigating
Parenting and Co-Founding are journeys, not points in time. Parenting isn’t complete when a child is born, starts school or even turns 18 necessarily. Just as the founding of a startup is not complete upon its incorporation or the launch of its first product.
At the same time, parenting and Co-Founding are not computer games that can be irrevocably completed. A child may find person-world fit, only for that to be upended by a significant life event like illness or divorce. A startup’s product-market fit may be similarly upended by the development of a new technology, a global economic shock or pandemic.
When done well then, parenting and Co-Founding never end. But past a certain point the train has left the station; it is too late for someone to start. Hence the “first” in navigating to a sustainable business or life. If someone hasn’t borne the ultimate responsibility prior to that point, it’s not realistic for them to bear it after.
To Be A Co-Founder
Is to accept stress and emotional weight. You have ultimate responsibility for first navigating the startup to a sustainable business. There is a significant probability that it won’t get there. You will feel the highest highs and the lowest lows.
Is to accept that nothing is outside of your circle of concern. Like parents, you as Co-Founders will likely divide up areas of responsibility that your skills are best suited to overseeing. But nothing is off-limits for you to have a view on. And nothing is off-limits for you to be drawn in to assist on.
Is to accept the responsibility of emotional, not just functional, authority. The original DNA of the business is you. If you use that emotional authority wisely, then the values and culture of the business are much more likely to be perpetuated in a virtuous and inspiring way.
That’s All
That’s my definition of a Co-Founder. In the next post, I cover why I decided I wanted to work with one in building Mayday.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned!