Who is the Right Cofounder for You? Find the Perfect Match
Answering this question is about as easy as answering the question who you should marry (or have an equivalent life-long commitment).
Meaning: not easy (to answer).
There are no golden formulas, proven recipes or universal answers. I am not saying all of this to leave you out in the dark though. I just want to manage your expectations and set the mindset that finding the right cofounder is an exciting process that can take a lot of effort, should take some time and must be done with a clear mind on what it is that you are looking for - if this search is to be successful.
You are likely to spend with your cofounder(s) a significant amount of your time and share with them some very intense high and lows (as the entrepreneur journey proceeds).
What you are looking for is a match on multiple levels:
- Skills, experience, expertise, assets
- Values & objectives fit
- Personality fit
In these series we will look at all the levels one by one, starting with the hard skills bit.
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Skills, experience, expertise, assets
Good practice is to start from the hard skills bit - as it is usually the most easy to define with objective criteria.
The recommended starting point (Option A) is the needs of your business. That requires that your idea is sufficiently outlined so you know what it is (and at least reached the market validation point so the need for further pivots is at least somewhat limited).
Alternatively, you can start from YOUR OWN skills, experience, expertise and assets (Option B).
I will give you tools to do both.
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Option A: Starting from the needs of your business
You can use the business model canvas and its key resources part to map what your business needs until the next foreseeable gateway / milestone.
Zooming on the key resources
From the resources list highlight what you are missing and evaluate which of the missing elements are essential for the MID to LONG term success of the business.
Missing resources that are one-off (i.e. legal incorporation, starting regulatory checks, initial website design) are best to be bought. MID term missing resources should only be considered if there is no other way to get them AND if they are essential for the business.
With the list of MID to LONG term required resources essential for the success of the business, you can start defining the hard skills requirement of the cofounder.
Option B: Starting from YOUR OWN skills, experience, expertise and assets
If you are still in the stage when you suspect your idea can evolve a lot and you don't have enough specific outline to define the concrete skill set, you can take this big picture approach.
To go really back to basics here - what is business?
- You have a product/service
- You can sell it
- You can develop a profitable business model around it
Critically look at these 3 points and ask yourself which points are sufficiently covered by what YOU have/know. The parts you cannot cover are the ideal candidate for your cofounder - skills, experience, expertise and assets.
Example 1
You have an idea for a product and can sell it, but you need someone to develop it (CTO).
Example 2
You have developed a product (working prototype for example), and need someone to sell it (CMO / CCO).
Example 3
You have product and can sell it, but need some help on managing the business (CFO / COO).
After finishing one of these steps (Option A or B) you should get a good starting point to define the skills, expertise, experience and assets that your ideal cofounder should bring to the table.
To learn more, you can also check out my Cofounding a Team the Right Way online course here.
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