7 Things you must consider before choosing your cofounder
Working together with my partner for 5 years have made me realize that we need to be very cautious in choosing business partner. How cautious, you ask? As cautious as in case of a life partner. If your work chemistry is good with your co-founder, working together will be full of bliss and so much fun. But if it does not work or somehow your vision does not match or way of doing things is different, then it will be a huge headache. It will create problem not only in your business but in your overall wellbeing.
Until and unless your company exists your business partner is a part of your life too. Company is like a baby and you are like its parents who need to take care of it together.
You and your partner will not only spend huge amount of time together but spend that time in some pressurized decision, all the ups and downs, challenges struggles, etc. along with victory, joy and sorrow.
Choosing a co-founder is one of the foremost and important steps in starting a business if you are not going solo. There are many different ways to go about finding and choosing your cofounder. Some will start with their best friend or with someone who has varied skills but in majority they choose people who they have known for quite some time.
Based on my experience I am sharing with you 7 things you must consider before you choose your co-founder,
1. Ensure Chemistry by working on some off work project: Before you start your business, it is very important to know and understand each other. 4 years ago, when Jasper and I, were about to start an IT company we gave about 1 year of time to get to know each other well. We worked on a same charity which gave us enough knowledge about each other’s working style / ethics, our thinking process, our communication method, how passionate we are towards the engaged work and how comfortable we are with each other spending time for a long hour of work. That made us realize our chemistry could bring a good result in business.
I am not telling you to work for a year but at least you could work together in some project similar or different to what your business will be. There you’ll get a chance to know each other very well and decide whether to continue with the work based relationship.
2. Complimentary Skills: Working with varied skills and strength will definitely help in your business. Make sure that you and the cofounder you plan to choose have different skills and strength that compliments to your line of work and skill.
For eg; I am good in Sales, Marketing and Networking and Jasper is great in app development and digital content creation. If I bring clients, Jasper will start working to fulfill their requirements and if Jasper creates a new product, it will be my responsibility to plan a marketing strategy and selling.
We all have strength and weakness, it’s a fact of life you need to help each other to boost strengths and mitigate weakness. It is very necessary to share your own weakness and strengths with each other in order to grow together.
3. Good Listener: Good listener is a great symbol of good entrepreneur. Having a cofounder as a good listener, will help you to share and understand each other’s feelings or vision, make meaningful and strong relationship, and avoid unnecessary miscommunication in both professional and personal life.
Choose a person who is humble, open to new ideas, and is a listener who is willing to collaborate on ideas if it’s good for the business.
4. Same level of enthusiasm and motivation: Office work time and schedule might work different for different people but you have to ensure that both of you have same level of commitments and willingness to make things happen.
Till now jasper and I couldn’t figure out who has given their more effort, we are so passionate in doing our work that we automatically give our 100% effort from our side. Jasper prefers to be at the office during the second hour and work in the evening and night time while I am an early bird. But somehow, we have managed to do every task smoothly.
5. Empathy: Empathy might be the best thing we learn in life that will help foster relationship with another human being.
When the work gets wrong sometimes, we get frustrated and worried but we always treat each other as a human being who makes mistakes, get stressed and are not perfect.
When you show empathy to your coworkers or cofounder it might be interpreted as a weakness to some, but it actually helps you generate trust with your cofounder which will show that you care about them as humans not just as a coworker.
6. Sincerity: Honest cofounder who shares and listen sincerely goes a long way in business. A sincere partner can help prevent your business from certain loss. He/she is always thinking how to solve any problem that arises using less resources possible that helps foster your company.
7. Learning nature: Having the learning nature means absence of ego. Learning nature has always been the best part between cofounders despite both having varied skills and strength. Even if your cofounder lacks certain expertise or points mentioned above, if he/she has learning nature, it is only a matter of time till you see each other eye to eye.
Before I met Jasper I have worked with 2 other cofounders in a separate business idea and planned to work with few other people who are my friends in a few different business but with some it was just not meant to be and with my friends our chemistry was much better as friends than co-founders.
I personally believe you should never settle for the second best . Don’t automatically choose your best friend or any closed person without knowing them closely personally, professionally and their style of working .
