This post is part of The Holloway Syllabus series. You can read and search the contents of all of them in one place in The Holloway Modern Work Library. To create this Holloway Syllabus, we put in more than 30 hours of research to pull together and vet great resources. We believe this is the most comprehensive and authoritative list (over 90 resources!) to help you master the ins and outs of finding a startup co-founder.
Ideas can pivot and evolve as they grow, funding can always be found somewhere else, the market will always change with a never-ending supply of competitors. But the team that brings it all together forms the company’s DNA.Jonathan Chan, “The Ultimate Guide To Creating The Perfect Founding Team”*
Spoiler alert: Founding a company is demanding. You need not only the idea but an enormous range of skills to turn it into something real. Creating a successful startup requires almost unimaginable amounts of time. It demands drive and grit. It certainly causes stress, sometimes outright depression, and it can take a toll on your personal relationships. Do you really want to do it alone?
For many, the answer is working with a co-founder. A co-founder can lessen the burden in many ways, but this arrangement has its own challenges. What makes someone the right person? Where do you find them? How many co-founders should you even have? When you’ve found your person, what details do you need to agree on? How do you avoid nasty disputes down the road? Should you have a co-founder at all? Read on for answers to these questions and more.
If you don’t read (or watch) anything else on the topic, take a look at these.
Many of the resources in this section were written by people from a similar privileged background. The challenges of finding a co-founder may be very different for people who face additional barriers, particularly those who have been historically barred access to certain networks. We are actively seeking to publish more perspectives on this topic; if you’d like to talk please reach out. And if we’ve missed anything major in this syllabus, we hope you’ll let us know!
Disclaimer: Holloway has not tested these services and cannot speak to their quality. But since you’re already here, we thought we could save you a Google search.