- The video discusses the importance of co-founders in starting a company and provides tips on finding and evaluating potential co-founders.
- Having a co-founder is recommended for increased productivity, higher quality brainstorming, accountability, and moral support.
- Successful companies often have more than one founder, and empirical evidence supports the idea of having a co-founder.
- YC's co-founder matching platform is a helpful resource for finding potential co-founders, along with personal networks and connections.
- The platform has over 40,000 profiles and has facilitated over 100,000 matches.
- Success stories include teams that met on the platform, became co-founders, and were accepted into YC, raising significant funding.
- Tips for getting the most out of the platform include filling out profiles thoroughly and highlighting achievements, and meeting potential co-founders in person or via Zoom as soon as possible.

- The importance of finding a good fit for a potential co-founder is emphasized, comparing the relationship to a marriage.
- Conversations about goals, values, stress management, communication, finances, and commitment should be had early on.
- It is recommended to meet in person to assess compatibility.
- Complementary skills are not as important as compatibility.
- If non-technical, it is advised to seriously consider finding a technical co-founder rather than hiring a dev shop.
- Trial projects are suggested to test working together before committing to a full co-founder relationship.
- Equity should be split equally by default, as the work and idea are more important than who came up with it.
- Open and clear communication is crucial in a co-founder relationship, and expectations should be discussed early on.
- Topics such as work hours, availability, salary, and milestones should be addressed to avoid future conflicts.

- Misalignments in expectations can lead to resentment in co-founder relationships over time.
- Building trust is essential in co-founder relationships, as a lack of trust can lead to breakups.
- Trust can be built through pre-existing relationships, but it doesn't always guarantee a functional co-founder relationship.
- Tips for building trust include trusting people by default, communicating honestly and frequently, creating space for mistakes, and spending time together in person.
- Clear roles and responsibilities, including titles and areas of ownership, are important for decision making in co-founder relationships.
- Understanding each other's personality and communication styles can help build trust and avoid conflicts.
- Regularly scheduled one-on-ones, ongoing feedback, and addressing issues promptly are effective habits and structures for fostering a productive co-founder relationship.

- Don't delay hard conversations and address problems when they are small
- Engage a coach or counselor for interpersonal issues
- Avoid personal statements and normalize failure
- Argue and get comfortable arguing, but have a decision maker
- Disagree and commit once a decision is made
- Remember that both co-founders have the same goal of startup success
- Gain desire for a co-founder, clarity on choosing one, or insight on working together.

The video emphasizes the importance of co-founders in starting a company and provides tips for finding and evaluating potential co-founders. It recommends using YC's co-founder matching platform, personal networks, and connections to find potential co-founders. Success stories of teams meeting on the platform and raising significant funding are highlighted. The importance of compatibility, open communication, and trust in co-founder relationships is emphasized. Tips for building trust and effective habits for a productive co-founder relationship are provided.

Catheryn Li built the YC co-founder matching platform. This discussion with YC Visiting Partner Divya Bhat covers the importance of having a co-founder, how to get and vet one, and how to build a successful working relationship with your co-founder.

Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/SUS-apply
Work at a startup: https://yc.link/SUS-jobs

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 
00:00 - Introduction
00:41 - Meaning of a co-founder
03:39 - Finding a co-founder
04:39 - Co-founder matching platform
08:17 - Tips on getting the most of the platform
10:04 - Evaluate potential co-founder
12:35 - Technical co-founder vs. Dev shops
13:40 - Trial projects
14:40 - Spliting equity
16:29 - How to work together
18:59 - Topics to discuss before committing
20:07 - Building trust
24:01 - How to setup for quick decision making
26:20 - Personality and communication styles
29:04 - Useful habits for a productive relationship

I'm a software engineer here at YC and I lead the startup school team.

Today I have visiting group partner Divya with me, and we're going to talk about everything relating to co-founders.

And once you have 1, how to work together.

I'm really excited to talk about this today, actually.

Finding the right co-founder is arguably the most important part of starting a company.

I've seen so many startups fail or succeed due to co-founder issues.

And so I'm really glad we're doing this today.

And to start things off, let's clarify something.

So quite literally, a co-founder is someone who starts your startup with you.

So when you apply to YC, we consider someone to be your co-founder if they have at least 10% equity, but in general a co-founder is someone who is there from the beginning or close to the beginning who is building your company with you.

So if I'm hardworking and smart, can I just start my startup alone?

So yes, Kat, you're very hardworking and smart, and I don't doubt you.

The short answer is yes, you absolutely can.

But it's really hard, like really, really hard.

You know, A startup is a very difficult journey for anyone, and doing it alone makes it more than twice as hard.

And so we really recommend having a co-founder for the following reasons.

And when you have 2 people, 3 people, you can literally move 2 or 3 times as fast.

You can just get so much more stuff done.

Additionally, your brainstorming can be higher quality, right?

You can help each other see around corners.

Kind of maybe not get into a rut with a bad idea, have someone checking.

Accountability is a little bit more effective when there's someone else there.

You do your daily stand up and say, this is what I'm gonna get done today, and then there's someone there the next morning to ask you whether or not you did it.

And then I think moral support is another huge and sometimes overlooked component.

There's moments of optimism, there's moments of despair, and having someone that can both empathize with you but also balance you out in some of those scenarios can be just so helpful to

If you're not convinced by those theoretical reasons, it turns out that the empirical evidence also supports having a co-founder.

Most successful companies have been started by more than 1 founder.

Even companies that are famous for only 1 of its founders actually had at least 2.

Microsoft, we all know Bill Gates, but Paul Allen was around for 10

Apple, so Steve Jobs is the face of Apple, but Steve Wozniak was the 1 who designed and built the Apple computer.

And little known fact, they actually had a third co-founder, Ronald Wayne, he left pretty early, but there were 3 of them in the beginning.

Yeah, and Facebook, or I guess Meta now, if you've seen the social network, you'll know that Mark Zuckerberg had not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 co-founders.

So the list obviously goes on and on, but we also have some quantitative data to share.

So while YC does fund solo founders, yes, we do, we do fund solo founders, of YC's top 100 companies, only 4 were founded by a solo founder.

And in those cases, there is a clear pattern among the solo founders as well.

They are always able to make progress on their own.

So they built their own MVP, they got their own users, et cetera.

Yeah, so I actually know some of these guys.

And it's worth repeating then that while having a co-founder dramatically increases your chances of success, YC actually does fund solo founders.

We believe that ultimately you are the best judge of whether having a co-founder is the right call for you.

But if you are convinced that you need a co-founder, let's talk about where to find 1.

Yeah, so the obvious place to start is people that you know.

If you're in school, this is an awesome time to find a co-founder, right?

You're surrounded by classmates, friends, people who'd be fun to work with.

If you're working at a company, look to your coworkers that are smart, capable, impressive, people that you work well with.

And beyond that, look to other people in your network, friends, friends of friends.

And if you see someone who you think might be a good match, work on a project with them, right?

Like this can be a lower commitment way to test out your working relationship, your skill sets, than an actual startup.

And you can kind of get a sense for what it would be like to work with them.

As an added bonus, the kind of person who wants to work with you on an evening or weekend project is like usually really good co-founder material.

Yeah, these are all really great avenues for finding people you know in real life.

In parallel, I would also highly recommend checking out YC's co-founder matching platform.

When you sign up, you tell us about yourself and what you're looking for.

So we ask you stuff like, are you technical?

How many hours a week are you willing to commit?

Can you be responsible for, you know, engineering, sales, product, etc.?

So once you've done that, Our team will manually read and approve your profile, just to make sure you're not a robot, you're not a dev shop out here.

And once you're approved for the platform, you can then look at profiles that pass your filters.

If you see someone interesting, you can send them a message.

And if they're also interested in you, they'll match with you.

We recently also built a new feature that we called speed dating.

It does come from the concept of speed dating.

You set aside an hour to be online, you match with other founders for 5 minutes of one-on-one video chat at a time.

And it's just a really great way to quickly meet tons of people interested in starting startups, which is already a pretty big filter.

kind of especially as part of YC's greater ecosystem.

Well, I do know the answer to this question.

So we launched Codefinder matching early last year.

We now have 40,000 profiles on the platform and we actually just crossed 100,000 matches last week.

Do you have any success stories you can share?

So while it's a little bit early to say if these teams will last, you know, 7 to 10 years, we have seen some really promising early signs.

Over a dozen teams have met on the platform, decided to be co-founders, applied to YC together, and actually gotten accepted.

So Verinda was a PM at Visa where she launched credit cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve.

She left her job and spent about a year working as a solo founder on a product to help women build credit.

She was looking for a technical co-founder who was mission driven and had FinTech experience.

Mark had 10 years of engineering experience at PayPal.

He spent 6 years as CTO of family-oriented startups, and he wrote on his profile that he cared deeply about gender equity.

So they were a perfect match on paper, and it turns out they were a perfect match in real life.

They met on Zoom, they just vibed instantly.

So they arranged to meet in person, they met every day for the next week in person.

And so it was really easy for them to decide to work together.

These guys went through YC and raised $5.7 million.

It sounds like kind of a love at first sight co-founder matching scenario.

Do all co-founder matches take so quickly or do you have examples of things that maybe took a little bit more time to take?

So, you know, every story is a little different.

They're another team from the Summer 2021 batch.

These founders were actually some of the earliest users of co-founder matching, which is really cool.

Angie started a company to solve her own pains with irritable bowel syndrome.

He actually started a startup in the same problem space before.

So she knew right away that he was the 1.

But when they first met, David was actually working on a trial project with a different potential co-founder he met through the platform.

He thought her idea would never work, and so he ended up just being an advisor instead and they met once a week for a while.

But eventually, even though he wasn't sold right away on the idea, he was really impressed by Angie as a founder.

So they eventually took a very structured approach.

They filled out this 50 question long co-founder questionnaire and spent a month working on a trial together.

And by the end of that month, it was easy.

So they also went through YC and they raised like $1.5 million.

As an aside, that's interesting that he didn't love the idea but thought Angie was awesome.

This is something we see in general across the space.

So while we're on the top of co-founder matching success, can you share any tips on getting the most out of the platform for anyone out there that's gonna use it?

I imagine that some of this advice actually applies more broadly to a co-founder search, whether

or not it's on the platform, but like what have you seen?

Number 1 is just really fill out your profile.

It sounds basic, but the difference between 10% and 100% effort is very apparent, especially when you're comparing these profiles side by side.

So what I mean by that is, you know, put up a picture or a video.

Photos are optional on the platform, but it helps make you look like a real person.

So some people, especially women or people from other cultural backgrounds, value humility a lot.

So you really want to sell yourself here.

Yeah, you want to stand out from the crowd, right?

Like this is the time to just like put your achievements front and center.

Yeah, and I think this is especially important if you are a non-technical founder with an idea trying to recruit a technical co-founder.

This is a really common case on the platform.

But the thing is that technical founders get lots and lots of invites.

And so you have to differentiate yourself by bragging about your accomplishments and maybe show them the progress you've made on your own.

There's a huge difference between someone saying, hey, I have a great idea.

I'm just waiting for someone to help me build it versus like, hey, I'm working on an idea.

I have some users and I want a partner to come help me build it out.

Remember, people are joining you as a person, not your idea.

So like show what you can do as a person.

The second thing I would say is meet as soon as you can in real life if possible, but Zoom is also great.

According to stats from our platform, 70% of all meets happen within 2 weeks of matching.

So what I'm gathering is you either meet really soon or not at all.

All right, now that we have some avenues for finding potential co-founders, let's talk about how you know if they're a good fit for you.

What are some things you look for when evaluating a potential co-founder?

Yeah, so this might sound extreme, but a co-founder relationship is like a marriage.

And it's really important to get this right.

And in many cases, you might spend more time with your co-founder than you do with your actual spouse.

Especially if things are going well, exactly.

So I want to talk about a few things to align on early.

And we're going to talk about some of these again when we talk about working with your co-founder.

But early on, here's some conversations to have.

How stress, so how do each of you handle stress?

And how will you help each other handle stress?

Are you able to provide what the other person needs?

Because there are going to be stressful times.

So, can the 2 of you or 3 of you have an honest and frank conversation with each other and still move forward productively?

Finances are a very important 1 to talk about early.

How long can each of you go without a salary or with benefits?

Is there kind of a timeline in mind which you'd need to have more of a market rate salary or raise money?

Make sure there's some alignment on this, or at least a conversation.

Are you guys on the same page around this?

There's no right or wrong answer, but these conversations need to be had early on.

And then lastly, Kat touched on this earlier, but meet in person if you can.

It's a lot easier to communicate and get a sense of compatibility and communicate some of the nuance on the above topics if you're actually sitting face-to-face with someone.

There are some things people tend to think are important but maybe aren't actually so important.

So specifically what I'm talking about is complementary skills.

I got an email the other day from a founder telling me they needed to find someone to help fundraise and bring in a network of potential investors and experienced board members.

Actually, most skills are very learnable.

So that includes fundraising, marketing, even sales.

It's much more important that you're compatible with your co-founder in the other ways Divya mentioned above.

Yeah, so there's 1 exception to this rule, actually.

And so absolutely right, You don't need someone who can come in and, like, do your fundraising for you.

But if you're non-technical, you should really think seriously about getting a technical co-founder.

And 1 of the most common questions we get from non-technical co-founders is, I can't find a technical co-founder.

Can't I just hire a dev shop to help me build out my product?

The short answer is, please don't do that.

If you really can't find a technical co-founder, you should learn how to code.

Dev shops pose a ton of challenges, especially for really early stage companies.

You know, not only are they costly from day 1, but it can be extremely challenging to iterate quickly as you're learning from your users.

You know, dev shops are designed to ship clear deliverables.

And as an early stage startup, like you don't have a clear deliverable.

You're kind of feeling around in the dark and building for your users, and the requirements are changing on the fly.

They're just like, I'm going to do this thing, and you're going to pay

And iteration can just become really clunky, ineffective, and again, very expensive.

So in short, a technical co-founder is an amazing investment early on if you can find 1.

The last thing I want to bring up in this section about evaluating co-founders is trial projects.

The only way to tell if you work well together with someone is to try working together.

So at Co-Founder Matching, we recommend that before jumping into a full-blown co-founder relationship, you work on a trial project together first.

Essentially, you agree beforehand on a timeline, usually 2 to 4 weeks, a tangible project goal and scope, and also who owns the work at the end.

It's a very structured way to try working together with some mutual expectations.

I do want to say, though, remember at the end of the day, just like with any other risk you take in life, you will eventually need to take a leap of faith.

And that's especially true when you're starting a startup, which is risky in all sorts of ways.

So find someone you're willing to take a leap of faith with.

And we talked a little bit about de-risking things, and a lot of these questions we talked about earlier are ways to de-risk that co-founder relationship.

But again, de-risk it until the point you can, and then you just gotta go.

So, let's say you found someone you want to work with, you know, using co-founder matching or 1 of these other ways we talked about.

So now I want to move on to an important topic, which is how to split equity with your co-founders.

So the general YC advice is that by default, you should just split equity equally.

So there's lots of options here, but you can kind of start from that baseline.

And the reason for this is because, you know, you would like to be making equal contributions going forward, and you should both be equally motivated to work hard for a very long time.

And if you don't, like, why are they your co-founder?

And if things go well, first of all, The idea is very likely to change over time as you listen to your users.

But if things go well, you're going to be working together on this for the next 7 to 10 years or more or more.

So, you know, the point in time that you came up with the idea is just such a small part

So here are some other really common bad reasons we hear for splitting co-founder equity unequally.

I started working on this idea before my co-founder did.

My co-founder took a salary and I didn't.

I'm older and I'm more experienced than my co-founder.

We need someone to tie break when we have arguments.

So there is a good point here about needing a tiebreaker, but we'll talk about that in a second.

It doesn't need to be done through equity.

My co-founder agreed to their smaller share.

Another 1 is, you know, I raised so many thousand dollars before my co-founder joined.

So even if you think you got a good deal now, this could potentially result in resentment later down the line.

Yeah, you shouldn't be trying to get a good deal from your co-founder.

Like it kind of starts the relationship off

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Keys To Successful Co-Founder Relationships | Startup School