Should You Find A Cofounder?

VO: Get ready for your semi-regular dose of random ideas from the guys at Codelation. We like to talk about big ideas companies that are winning, and those that aren't along with current events in our crazy world of software startups. So come along with Erick and Josh, who challenge you to think big, start small and turn your ideas into something on this episode of, from idea to done

Josh: Here, ruin I'm Josh.

Erick: and I'm Erick and today's idea is should you find a co-founder and, you know, we get this quite a bit too, in a different episode, we kind of talked about offering PR people offering us to pay with equity. And this kind of really turns that up a notch, a co-founder has more skin in the game, but being around all these startups and early stage companies, what are your thoughts on if a company should find a co-founder or what should go into that decision? Yeah,

Josh: I mean, it's really, the question is, should you find a co-founder it's easy to make decisions when it's just you. Um, but that can also be paralyzing. Like, are you making the right decisions? Are you thinking about things in the right way? So it's kind of a double-edged sword is that you get to keep all the equity in the business, but if you don't have all the skillsets, are you, are you in trouble? And some people work better with a peer. Some people work better with full control. Um, at the end of the day, everyone lacks some sort of skills. And if you are going to find a co-founder, uh, find them with complimentary skills, not the same skills, um, and this is not a co-founder to us, but our first hire we made was, uh, Brian. And when he, he was our first programmer, when he came on board, I was programming and we hired a programmer. And so what happens, I realized totally crap he's way better at this than I ever will be. So I have to go find out a new job to do kind of like Maddie,

Erick: Exactly like Maddy. So yeah, as a business owner, without a co-founder, what are kind of some of the, you know, downfalls you see in bringing in another, you know, chef into the kitchen, or like when can this fun dream turn into a nightmare.

Josh: So, you know, to think about bringing somebody else into your startup, um, the way I think about it is, uh, what are the resources being added to the project? So, Eric, if you were an, I are going to go start our, our new startup for a water bottles for teenage mutant ninja turtles. As I see you have one in front of you,

Erick: Solid business idea.

Josh: Yes. Um, are you, are, is Erick working full time and I'm part-time are, am I putting money in and you aren't who's darling drawing salary who isn't, um, it's pretty easy to get excited about the idea, but in reality, it's going to be a lot of work. So really make sure you're planning and communicating as you start thinking about bringing in a co-founder, I will be

Erick: Part-time with no money in doing none of the work. So that's, that sounds like a good scenario for you. So what are some of the important, you know, we talked a little bit about it, but more to take into consideration if you kind of decide to take that route and get a co-founder, uh,

Josh: Make sure that you've found a co-founder that you can really communicate well with, you know, in the good and the bad, make sure you have the same vision for solving the problem who the target market is, how you're going to sell it. You know, how do you decide when you pivot understand each role and why it's needed? Um, you know, really just for each of your role set goals and milestones, you both agree on, um, if you're working in different roles, it may be easy to say that, you know, Eric, I'm building this entire product, I'm doing all the dev work, the design work, and you aren't doing anything other than networking. And so how's that fair, equal.

Erick: Well, you know, from what I, from my experience, the people that just network are absolutely the worst

Speaker 4: You get, where I'm coming from, you ant to make sure that you're aligned and understand that both seeds have value. It's

Erick: Tough to have two Kings. And when one's just a party king, and I think Europe has plenty of examples in history through that way, we don't really have time to dig into that. So do you have any like final advice on co founder?

Josh: Um, you know, really it's the decision to find a co-founder is really dependent upon the resources you have and how you want to take your product to market. Um, make sure you that you spend time talking and planning before you make anything official. If there's anything I've learned, it's, this is really going to take you awhile and you're essentially getting married.

Erick: And I like to really put all work in general, it's compared to a marriage, and if you're not growing together, you're probably going to get a divorce. And depending on not having agreements and not really planning before going into a marriage, it could get kind of messy. So thank you everyone for listening. If you know of a startup that could use our advice and random thoughts, send them over to correlation.com to hear our next podcast.