Finding a co-founder (or co-founders) is almost like finding a life partner. You probably have to date!

Luckily, no swiping here (yet?). One or two coffee shop chats should be enough to give you a signal to pursue more conversations with your potential co-founder(s) or not 💔

I wanted to share some of my questions that I've asked one way or another when meeting potential co-founders. Note that these questions weren't always asked exactly as they're written, I would weave them into the conversation. No one wants to play 20 questions at the coffee shop. It's about building a relationship, getting to know someone, and being clear about who you are: so make sure you can answer these for yourself! Think of this as a review sheet that you could fill out as you have your conversations.

These questions cover personal and professional interests, whys, whats, hows, whos, financials, and visions for the future. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and really, there's only one you must ask which is...

1. Do you want to co-found this company with me (or us)? (Do not open with this one. You must get a clear answer. You should feel a whole-body yes.)
2. Who do you spend most of your time with? Who are the four other people you spend the most time with?
3. How do you meet new people?
4. What are some of your favorite memories with past co-workers, family, and friends?
5. Who are your ideal first 5 hires? What would they do, when would you hire them, and why?
6. Why do you want to work on this thing?
7. Why do you want to start a company? Have you started one before? What happened during that experience?
8. What are your interests?
9. Do you have some intuition about what we'll work on?
10. If this doesn't work out are you willing to pivot? What will and won't you pivot to?
11. Should we pursue product lead growth or sales led growth? How should we decide?
12. What are your physical, personal, and professional goals over the next few years? How will you get there?
13. How do you like to work? (Writing a "How to work with me" doc is very useful. Things like working hours, distributed and on-site preferences, communication preferences, how flexible your schedules are, checkpoints for reconsidering, etc, should be written down.)
14. What are some of the cultural values you want the company to have?
15. What are your deal-breakers?
16. What are your game enders?
17. What's your personal financial situation?
18. Are you willing to work on this full time, without pay?
19. If you need a salary to start, how much do you need to feel financially secure? How long would you need that for?
20. What do we need for the both of us (or all of us) to pursue this full-time?
21. Should we go the VC route? When should we do that? How long can we afford to bootstrap? Is that worth it?
22. Will either of us (or any of us) put money into the company? (I believe this should inform equity splits and ownership to some extent.)
23. How will we split up equity? (Consider the founder's pie calculator and splitting equally because different trains of thought will help reveal everyone's preferences)
24. How will we divide responsibilities and handle disagreements?
25. What will our roles be and who will be CEO? What would we like our roles to grow into? (Someone should definitely be CEO from the start.)
26. How much time can we afford to spend together? (Where you form the company matters here. Especially early on, and even more if you have a relatively new relationship with the person and are still getting to know them.)

I hope these help you find the others.

🚀