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Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

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Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#1
I am a developer/entrepreneur, and whenever I start a new project I tend to work pretty hard on it (i.e., 10+ hours per day, six days a week). I am already doing fine financially, so if I launch a new project it's because it has the potential to solve a big problem and consequently to earn good money, that is why I get so motivated.

The first time I had a co-founder things didn't work out, exactly because I felt I was doing a lot more than my co-founder. For instance, once we had the prototype done we started pitching it to clients, but for every 10 clients I pitched the product my co-founder would pitch to 1. I decided to abort the project as I didn't want to do 80% of the work while earning only 50% of the profits. In this case my co-founder was also a developer.

After that experience I had the opportunity to co-found products with other people, but I always backed down for the same reason, I was afraid the other person wouldn't be able to keep up with me, so I would end up doing most of the hard work. This fear gets amplified when the co-founder is not a technical person, which means I'll certainly need to take care of the development aspect myself, while the other person focuses on the business aspects, which in my opinion are much less demanding on software related projects (at least in the early days).

And to be clear, I do know how to manage the business aspects too, so it's not like without a business co-founder I would be lost.

My questions:

1. Psychological Aspect: How do I overcome this fear?

2. Practical Aspect: How do I structure things with my co-founders so that I don't end up doing most of the hard work?

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#2
I'm pretty sure that many, many people in any organisation feel they work harder than the people around them. Put another way, the perceived average is far above the actual average.

For example, this is a community of developers but I'm sure on a business forum you'd find many people to disagree with your experience that development is harder.

It's also worth realising that without the business side of things, there is no business - even if you have good software. Similarly, your co-founder can't sell air, so he needs a good product grounding the business development. You may be working unequally, but the dependence from one to the other is equal.

Even inequivalent exchange can benefit both parties. It's a specific case of the general idea of the 'laws of value'. Take a look at the essay International exchange and the law of value by Isaak Dashkovskij.

http://libcom.org/library/international-exchange-law-value-i...

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#4
Are you sure your not working to hard and getting burned out then blaming it on the other person? I'm not say that's the case but you might want to look at that as an angle as well. I'm probably way off base but it doesn't hurt to examine yourself first.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#5
1. You don't. This is a legitimate fear. You get through it through communication. You say to the other person:

"In the past, when I've co-founded projects;

I felt I was doing a lot more than my co-founder. For instance, once we had the prototype done we started pitching it to clients, but for every 10 clients I pitched the product my co-founder would pitch to 1. I decided to abort the project as I didn't want to do 80% of the work while earning only 50% of the profits."

If the response is something like "Well, I'm really just looking for a fun project to do after work..." keep looking - you have different objectives and motivations.

As an aside, the best co-founder relationships are formed on complimentary skill sets. You can do what they can't (or struggle with), and vice versa. As such, I would encourage you to find a sales person/designer/hustler, as opposed to another developer.

2. Very clear upfront communication of exactly your previously stated concerns over coffee or (ideally) drinks, and then vesting.

Also, this statement is completely, painfully wrong: "while the other person focuses on the business aspects, which in my opinion are much less demanding on software related projects"

I would never co-found a project or company with someone who ever said this to me. You're saying to the other person "No matter how good you are, or what partnerships you make, or how you market this project, or which key customers you close, or what relevant market research you do, or who you hire, or which investors you close, your performance can never measure up to the demanding schedule and work of the developer," which is a pretty bad place to start forming a partnership with another person.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#6
Here's a specific answer to number 2, because it's trivial: structure your business founding contracts and documents accordingly. Make sure there are clauses for vesting or share distribution that reflect what you'd find acceptable with respect to effort delivered. These documents can be as detailed and fine-grained as you like, down to the minute if you're especially motivated/masochistic.

For the first question, I have a few suggestions, probably that you will not find appealing.

First, do try some introspection, especially with a view toward truly analyzing whether "driving hard": a) means what you think it means (in the specific context of your projects) and b) is a working solution for you to accomplish your goals--I'm loathe to invoke canned/cliched nonsense, but sometimes "work smarter, not harder" actually does apply; c) is something you would do regardless (that is, are you the kind of person who wants to solve a problem, or are you more after the thrill of "driving hard" in and of itself, and so no matter what your partner(s) might do, you're going to drive that much harder).

Second, seriously consider the possibility that what you need is an assistant/employee and not a co-founder. That is, consider that the breadth and depth of the projects you're interested in, with respect to the real size of the problem and the amount of effort necessary to produce the solution, just aren't as "big" as you think they are. It may be that the problems you're solving are solvable by "one person plus a little help", and don't need more than one person "driving hard." In this case, since you seem to enjoy "driving hard," you're looking for the wrong kind of partnership: you want somebody to pass off parts of the project to, but you still want to control the overwhelming majority of development.

Third, seriously stop and think a moment about your statement regarding how demanding "the business aspects" are. I'm going to be viciously blunt here: your question reads like you have a real ego problem and, unfortunately, at the same time somewhat ironically that you lack the understanding that "the business aspects" are actually meaningful if you want to have a "big" success (for certain values of "big"). Getting them done is not trivial, and certainly can be at least as demanding as the technical components of a product. That's intentionally vague because, frankly, your question is (we don't know what you consider a "big problem" is, what "good money" means, etc.). You're "doing fine financially" as a "developer/entrepreneur," so that is an indication you have at least some idea of what the non-technical "business aspects" of this industry are. Maybe you should try to study them so you have a more mature understanding, and therefore are less inclined to be so utterly dismissive of non-technical co-founders.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#7
One thing that jumped out at me was for every 10 clients I pitched the product my co-founder would pitch to 1

That's a very odd relationship - typically, the CEO pitches, perhaps with the aid of their co-founder. I don't think teams often split up pitches and each go do their own. Although, that strikes me as potentially a good thing to try if there isn't a clear best talker on the team.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#9
> Practical Aspect: How do I structure things with my co-founders.

Have a written scorecard with specific team member accountabilities, review weekly.

The People Component, getting the right people in the right seats will be a your most critical task. It's helpful to understand your core strengths vi-a-vis your co-founders. And making sure everyone is operating in areas of their unique abilities.

Recommend reading Traction by Gino Wickman > http://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/193...

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#10

1. You don't. This is a legitimate fear. You get through it through communication. You say to the other person: "In the past, when I've co-founded projects; I felt I was doing a lot more than my co-founder. For instance, once we had the prototype done we started pitching it to clients, but for every 10 clients I pitched the product my co-founder would pitch to 1. I decided to abort the project as I didn't want to do…

> As an aside, the best co-founder relationships are formed on complimentary skill sets. You can do what they can't (or struggle with), and vice versa. As such, I would encourage you to find a sales person/designer/hustler, as opposed to another developer.

On the face of it, this advice seems reasonable. But this advice will result in precisely the asymmetry to OP is worried about. If you have a technology product, I strongly discourage you from taking on a non-technical cofounder.

I made a huge mistake co-founding a company with someone whom I thought had a skill set that would compliment mine. He was, of course, a non-technical. While I coded for 90 hours a week trying to build an MVP, he did thought experiments, worried about competitors, and fretted about the color of our logo. In short, he did very little to move the product forward other than arbitrarily tweaking design specifications (before we had MVP and were even able to A/B test or validate with users). It was an extremely counterproductive and demoralizing experience.

This may sound like an edge case, but I meet people all the time whose startups failed because the team couldn't get along. This is usually caused by one person feeling like they're doing all the work. And that's usually because one person IS doing all the work - the other person is a non-technical cofounder, and can't do much meaningful work, only look busy by trying to get twitter followers, having lunch meetings with reporters, and doing competitor analysis - all work that is meaningless if you don't have an MVP you can use to validate and iterate toward product-market fit.

My advice is simple: find a technical cofounder who also has the confidence to pitch. Find a technical cofounder who can help validate an MVP and iterate it to product-market fit. Find a technical cofounder who isn't daunted by needing to pick up new skills. This is a startup. You're looking for generalists, not specialists. Whether someone can code is a good litmus test for whether they are serious about doing tech startups, or merely dabbling.

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