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

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

#21

Post by nlh »

There's no simple answer -- mostly because there are very few co-founder relationships where it's a direct 50/50 split of the work. One thing I've realized is that, like any relationship, startup relationships are based around trade-offs, and one of those trade-offs is that sometimes there's a workload imbalance.

There are a few solutions for your fear (i.e. in your head). One is don't get involved in 50/50 relationships -- you'd be surprised how understanding folks are about this.

I helped start a company with some friends back in 2006 and right away it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to commit to being involved full-time. I was still involved, and I helped get the thing off the ground, but we all knew I wasn't going to be able to make the time commitment necessary to be an equal partner in the business. So I wasn't! The CEO took a larger stake in the business and I took a much smaller stake -- we were both totally OK with this, as it fairly reflected efforts put in. (BTW - this company is now a successful venture-funded company in SV and the CEO remains one of my closest friends -- I'm a 'friend of the company', visit their offices regularly, and there isn't an ounce of bad blood among any party whatsoever).

The other thing to think about if you do go the 50/50 route is that different folks have different types of contributions, and even though the hours may seem imbalanced. For example, if you pitch 8/10 customers and your partners pitches 2/10 -- BUT...your partner lines up the funding / does all of the recruiting / balances the books if you have no accounting skills / etc., consider that raw hours might not be the best measure of "effort put in".

So it really boils down to this: Either go 50/50 and be comfortable that you're each making essential contributions even though hours might not be the same, or don't go 50/50 and instead have equity reflect contributions.

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

#22

Post by benpanter »

From a business perspective I think it's important to move from thinking about "elapsed time" to "value created", especially when considering co-founders with different skill sets. In my experience the two are only very loosely correlated.

How would you barter between product development and sales?

How about if the sales person worked a day a week but closed ten times as many sales as the full time dev?

What if you got a co-founder who investors trusted from prior experience that drove them to actually invest?

How about someone leaving college versus someone who could earn several $100k on the open market?

Apparently[1] teams tend to do better than loan founders, and ultimately whatever you put together has to be tuned to what would motivate the other members of the team to stick around as long as you need them to in order that value is created. I don't believe there is a cookie cutter that fits.

[1] Somewhere in Disciplined Entreprenuership, Bill Autlet, MIT

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

#23

Post by Envec83 »

jason_tko wrote: post #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…

Thanks for the feedback Jason. It's good to know this is a legitimate fear, and I'll certainly work on the clear upfront communications to mitigate the problem.

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

#25

Post by michaelq »

jason_tko wrote: post #17
michaelq wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My advice still holds, and yes, it is also completely reasonable. You found a terrible co-founder. A terrible co-founder, business or otherwise, will generate terrible outcomes. One thing that is very important to understand is that a great business co-founder is as rare (if not rarer) than a great technical co-founder. If you happen to find someone like that, having an attitude that they won't do any work, and they…

Rather than dismissing my cofounder as terrible, I encourage you to consider the possibility that advice like yours, which we followed in cofounding the company, set him up for failure.

Having specialization early on was a mistake. It was a difficult situation, and it wasn't entirely his fault that there was, for long stretches of time, little for him to do.

A startup cycle goes something like this: initial theory -> MVP -> validation of theory using MVP -> iterating to product-market fit -> scale

Even in that highly oversimplified flow, there are a lot of shifts from "product mode" to "development mode". Most of these steps must happen sequentially. If only half of the team is fully engaged in any given step, you get a lot of slack.

There's a joke that first startups should hire a bunch of developers to build the product. Then they should fire the developers and hire a bunch of salespeople to sell the product.

Which begs the question - why not just hire developers who can sell, and avoid paying all that unemployment?

Larger organizations can get away with having specialists onboard. Smaller organizations (2-3 people) can't afford this luxury.

Your advice would hold for a later stage startup, but it is unreasonable advice for an early stage startup.

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

#26

Post by cynusx »

Use reverse vesting and don't put provisions in that cofounders can't fire each other.

This will twist the incentives to align everybody.

  1. if you do 80% of the work and he does 20%, you can fire him and reap 100% of the rewards
  2. Same holds for you so it is fair
  3. The person who works the hardest will be the hardest to fire so if there is a big conflict the guy who doesn't work as hard will go. In case of conflict there is a lot of incentive to resolve it.
  4. This dynamic drives everybody to work really hard.
  5. Everybody will aim to make themselves as valuable as possible because there is essentially no downside to letting you go the first year. Doing valuable things will create downside for the company.
You have to be bitten by this a couple of times before vesting starts to make sense, after all why would I not just get all my equity upfront. The worst I heard was a founder walking away with 30% of the company 9 days after the company incorporated.

Whether a business person will be able to contribute equally depends strongly on the type of project you start and where you are going to find customers.

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

#27

Post by jason_tko »

Envec83 wrote: post #23
jason_tko wrote: post #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…

Thanks for the feedback Jason. It's good to know this is a legitimate fear, and I'll certainly work on the clear upfront communications to mitigate the problem.

Sure - best of luck. Finding a great co-founder is really, really hard. In fact, chances are you will spend more time with your co-founder than your significant other.

I'd advise spending as much time as possible, and trying to work together on some smaller projects before making the plunge.

Oh, as a minor note, instead of saying "I decided to abort the project as I didn't want to do 80% of the work while earning only 50% of the profits."

I would smooth that out to something like, "After some discussions on the amount of time we were both able to commit, in the end it made sense to stop working together. It seemed like the best choice since I was able and willing to spend a lot more time than he/she was, so we ended up parting ways amicably."

Assuming of course, that is what happened..!

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

#28

Post by Envec83 »

michaelq wrote: post #10
jason_tko wrote: post #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…

> 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…

I agree Michael. That is, in fact, why I said I believe that the business aspect is much less demanding than the development one, at least in the early days of a tech startup.

Very interesting topic in my opinion.

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

#29

Post by JSeymourATL »

jason_tko wrote: post #19
JSeymourATL wrote: post #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 Tr…

Out of curiosity, have you successfully worked with business co-founders on equal footing, with a written scorecard, reviewed weekly? This seems like the business equivalent of judging performance based on lines of code written.

Yes, twice -- It's not about judging. Think of the scorecard (dashboard) as a tool to keep everyone on the same page. Especially as you scale-up, the weekly review is vital to marking progress and planning ahead. The structured dialog is vital to relationships with co-founder peers.

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

#30

Post by gamerDude »

michaelq wrote: post #10
jason_tko wrote: post #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…

> 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…

> Find a technical cofounder who can help validate an MVP and iterate it to product-market fit.

Have a non-technical co-founder source real customers to validate the MVP.

Non-technical cofounders can be in constant contact with the market generating your alpha and beta users so that when you launch you are generating cashflows to help sustain your business. You don't even need to have an MVP to get a potential customer waiting to try the first version of the product. All you need is an idea and to get in front of customers with the idea. That way you can get feedback from them the entire time you are developing, not just when you have a product.

Non-technical cofounders could also be establishing relationships with investors and partners that could accelerate your business. It sounds like your co-founder just didn't have a good idea of how they could really contribute to getting a sustainable business.

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