40 - Co-Founder Mini-Series - Finding My Co-Founder
Welcome back to the Co-Founder mini-series of how I came to work with Griff in starting Mayday. He’s 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.
The prior posts in this series have covered 1) what a startup Co-Founder is, 2) why I wanted to work with one in building Mayday and 3) what makes a great Co-Founder. This post is about how I went about finding one and the process that culminated in Griff becoming the Co-Founder of Mayday. It is a post of two parts: landing on Griff as the Co-Founder (the who), and the process of successfully getting us to the point of Co-Founding together (the what).
The Who
The first question here was not “who”, but “how many” Co-Founders I wanted. There is no right answer to this question. It is a function of the skills required to initially lead all of the functional areas of the business. It’s about minimum viable founding team to provide that coverage. Beyond that, it’s not worth the dilution of ownership and risk of misalignment that additional Founders would bring. I felt it was possible to find a single great Co-Founder that would provide the coverage we needed for Mayday as a founding team.
The process of landing on Griff as that single great Co-Founder was simple. Back in April 2021, a couple of months into starting up, I made a list of potential Co-Founders. I looked at my personal network, especially people I had worked with previously. One name stood apart at the top of that list.
The What
Griff was my ideal Co-Founder. What did I do next? I started the conversation early. I owe a big debt of gratitude to my wife Jess for pushing me to do this. No downside in doing so. Only upside from having more of a run up than leaving it late and searching for a shotgun marriage.
Here’s the abbreviated timeline of the process that led to Griff becoming the Co-Founder of Mayday:
5 May 2021 - we met for dinner. Ran him through the mission for Mayday at a high level. Said in due course would want a Co-Founder and no-one would love to have that conversation with more than him. Next action: Weekly calls to discuss the vision for what the business would be;
30 June - working dinner together to discuss the initial idea for transfer pricing as an area of expert knowledge to focus on. Griff saw things differently to me, convincing me that we should start by building the back end of transfer pricing with intercompany recharge automation. Next action: Research to be able to design what became Mayday Recharger;
6 September - working evening together to run through the wireframe designs for the product that Griff had prepared. Next action: Find contract engineering help, which ended up being working with William, to build the first version that Griff could oversee alongside his full-time job;
End of 2021 - work with William complete and we had an initial version of the product. Griff was moving house so not in a position to join as Co-Founder yet. I explained that Mayday was at a juncture where I needed to know whether he was going to do so, even if the “when” was still uncertain. Otherwise, I needed to prioritise finding another Co-Founder. The “whether” was a yes! Next action: Move forward with the limited capacity we had. Complete house move!;
Start of March 2022 - house move completed and Griff resigned with one month notice period;
19 April - post Easter holidays for both of us, first day as fully fledged Co-Founders!
Key takeaways for me from this process:
Can’t start too early shaping the idea with your putative Co-Founder(s). The greater they see their DNA in it, the higher the likelihood you end up with your desired result of working together as Co-Founders;
We both thought we’d enjoy working together as Co-Founders. But why just think when you can know by doing?
Be patient and flexible without procrastinating. Practice “do I need to say this, do I need to say it now?”. It was only at the end of 2021, after 7 months of collaborating together, that I needed to have the “go / no go” conversation with Griff. It was easy, natural and it got the desired result;
This links to the be patient. Think probabilistically not binarily. Doing the latter will put too much pressure on it and likely lead to rashness that jeopardises end success. I applied Bayesian updating throughout this process. After the May dinner with Griff, I remember saying to Jess that I thought it had a 25% chance of succeeding. Given the upside of working with Griff, that was more than worth pursuing. I vividly remember a conversation Jess and I had in the car at some point in summer 2021 when I realised I was now at 51% confidence this would succeed. Over a period of eleven months that probability went from 25% to 100%;
Acknowledge the role of timing and that there’s a huge element of luck here. It’s not just whether this is the right person, but whether their current situation is conducive to Co-Founding a startup. Financial and life factors, that you have no control over, need to align. I was lucky that, once his house move had completed, they did for Griff.
That’s how I went about finding Griff as my Co-Founder. The final post in this Co-Founder series details how we agreed to split the equity in the company and our approach as Co-Founders. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!