Salma says marriage is never certain till it is over. Similarly a co-founding is also never certain. It takes work, compatibility and some luck.
One of the greatest challenges that startup founders face is finding the appropriate co-founder. The journey of building a startup is extremely tough and it is important to have a co-founder to fall back on. It helps if both of you or all of you complement each other. But over and above that, it is important that you are able to support each other and trust one another.
This week Salma Moosa conducted a workshop on finding the co-founder which she started with an activity. Later during the workshop, she dived into some of the intricacies and points that one must keep in mind when co-founding and also how to ensure that the division of equity takes place in a fair manner.
Who is your co-founder?
We all have our biases and preconceived notions of what our co-founder should be like. Sometimes you might find a friend or classmate who fits the bill but if you do not find one that easily what next.
The activity involved looking at pictures of certain people and suggesting who amongst them would or could be the co-founder. The objective was to make people realise the inherent biases that make a lot of founders sideline several potential co-founders. The main difference between an old friend or classmate is that they are able to cross the threshold of bias very easily and hence the discussion begins to proceed beyond just founding.
Co-founding is a journey and and having an emotional comfort is very important. Skill sets can be learnt and often are. Comfort cannot be invented once you both start out. There were several insightful thoughts on factors that need to be considered and the factors that can be neglected or overlooked in a co-founder.
Over the course of the workshop, many aspects of meeting potential co-founder were delved into. How to start slow? Why dating is important? What are the factors that influence decision including – skills, learning, objective/goals, adaptability and many other such things?
Overall the session had several insights for first-time founders and they even got to confirm some of their thoughts and others questioned.
Next week’s session is on Building Tech Products for Non-techies. The session will dive into the depths of what is important and what is not when building a tech product and what is the bare minimum that a founder needs to understand even if they are outsourcing a product.
