How to “test out” a potential co-founder?
Starting a business is like embarking on an epic adventure, and choosing the right co-founder is (or should be?) one of your key first decisions. Imagine scaling a mountain—you need someone who can keep up, share the load, navigate unexpected challenges with you, and it is still not enough. You also need someone you enjoy doing it with! In the high-stakes world of startups, your co-founder isn't just a partner; they're your lifeline. So, how do you ensure your potential co-founder is the perfect match?
What if you try and….
The only way to see if you work well with someone is to, well, work with them. Start by doing a project together, like a weekend-long hackathon. This way you will get an idea of what working together would feel like. Picture this: you and your prospective partner are locked in a room with a mission to build a viable product in just 48 hours. This intense, high-pressure environment will quickly reveal each other's strengths, weaknesses, and working styles. You'll see how they handle stress, solve problems, and collaborate in real-time. It's a crash course in teamwork, communication, and innovation. By the end of the weekend, you'll have a clear sense of whether you can thrive together in the unpredictable world of startups. This hands-on experience is invaluable and will provide you with insights that no amount of meetings or planning sessions could ever achieve.
Aside from working on a joint weekend-long project, the first effective method of testing your business partnership could be engaging in a series of customer validation interviews. This process demands a keen ability to listen, empathize, and extract valuable insights from potential users—all while staying unified. By conducting these interviews together, you'll see how well your co-founder can engage with customers, ask the right questions, and synthesize feedback into actionable strategies. This exercise also allows you to test your collaborative problem-solving skills and your ability to pivot based on real-world data. Further, you will be able to observe how your partner handles constructive criticism, works with and adapts to new information, and stays committed to validating your business idea, which can all reveal crucial aspects of their character and working style. Ultimately, these interviews can offer a window into your potential co-founder's dedication to customer-centric thinking, an essential trait for any successful startup.
If everything works well with your potential partner by the time of having your idea validated thoroughly, the next step is to build an MVP of your solution. This surely requires focus, resourcefulness, and a deep understanding of your target market—qualities that are essential in any co-founder. Through this process, you may observe how well your partner can prioritize features, manage resources, and iterate based on feedback. Regardless of what type of co-founder you are looking for, you'll see firsthand their technical and strategic capabilities, and most importantly, their commitment to the project's vision. Collaborating on an MVP will not only test your combined skills and creativity but it will also highlight your ability to align on goals, make tough decisions, and navigate the complexities of product development together. This shared experience lays a solid foundation for assessing long-term compatibility and synergy in your startup journey. From our experience of working with hundreds of startups, this phase can be the most critical point for co-founders, bringing both of their roles, communication, and level of trust in their partnership to the ultimate test. Unfortunately, it has been more than once when we have experienced teams splitting up during this phase.
As mentioned before, getting along in a work-context is necessary, but not enough. If you end up as co-founders, you will be “stuck together” for years, through thick and thin. That’s why spending time together outside of the work context already, in the beginning, can give a lot of perspective. Is this someone you enjoy spending time with?
These informal settings take away the pressure of work and allow you to connect on a personal level. Sharing a casual drink can open up conversations about values, life goals, ways of coping with stress. Similarly, a run or any other hobby you enjoy doing can reveal your co-founder's perseverance, resilience, and ability to push through challenges. Such casual activities provide a glimpse into their personality, sense of humor, and how well they can balance work with life. Building a startup isn't just about the business aspect—it's about building a relationship based on mutual respect, understanding, and friendship. By enjoying some leisure time together, you can assess whether your dynamic works both inside and outside the professional setting, ensuring a stronger, more unified partnership.
After this, you should have a pretty clear idea whether you want to say YES to this person by the altar. However, if you are still unsure, then perhaps the right step might be to keep looking for “the one”. Ultimately, it is a very time-consuming and stressful process, and while some may be lucky on their first try, others may take months. And that’s okay. After all, Rome wasn’t discovered in a day either :)
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