"I need to find a co-founder" - said someone who had a start-up.
"Why?" - I asked.
The "Why" led to the "Who" which led to the "When" - which led back to the core question of "Who is a co-founder?"
Is a co-founder someone who "co-founds"? i.e. part of the original team that started out?
Is there a time axis to this? Only in the 1st year? or before Series A? What if someone comes in later? What about folks who are already there when a new co-founder comes in? Are they not co-founders?
First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy is the wonderful video of how the whole crowd starts dancing only after it sees the 2nd follower join.
Not when the Dancing Guy started dancing. Or when the 1st follower joins.
Maybe a co-founder is someone who shares the risk or provides tremendous value when others were not willing or able.
If so, why restrict it only to the early stages? Someone could add tremendous value & take risk later in the company's life cycle as well. Or over a period of time.
In a start-up, the co-founders' credentials are seen as the early marker of value. Early customers & investors want to meet the co-founders as they are not sure if they should trust the new idea.
As the start-up grows, the marker of value changes. My understanding is as follows:
Idea-Team - Product/Service - Users - Customers - Profits.
E.g. If you have 500 customers and have a good Product, does it really matter to your customers who the co-founders are?
As a business scales, co-founder designations can confound the growing organisation structure. Customers and media seem to like co-founders. Not standard designations.
The "professional" managers struggle to figure out how to handle inputs from co-founders. Are they also like any another manager in the org structure? Can they reject them? Or do they have special horns?
Yes. Yes. No.
Similarly, the co-founders struggle with their changing roles in the evolving organisation.
Can they still fluidly move across functions, levels and take decisions by following their instinct? Or do they have to work within the newly forming org structure, confined to a particular role, through newly hired "professional" managers who are still learning the ropes?
On both sides, it is not an easy transition and many don't make it.
(Btw, irrespective of the credentials of the co-founders, any additional management hired is called "professional". I never could figure out why co-founders are assumed to be unprofessional and managers to be professional. But thats for another post someday.)
Maybe the co-founder tag comes with an expiry date?
Or maybe being a co-founder is a state of mind. It is not a role. Not a designation. Not an acknowledgement that you were there first. or 2nd. or 3rd.
Maybe it doesn't matter when you joined. Or what role you play.
If you keep faith in the vision when everyone else is losing hope.
If you take the risk when no one else is willing to.
If you stand-up against dilution of the vision due to the pressure to grow faster.
If you stand up for the right culture & values.
If you keep building the organisation brick-by-brick.
You are the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be the co-Founder, my friend!
(With due apologies to Mr. Kipling)
Try not. Do. Or Do Not. There is no Try. - Yoda
Maybe we can have a whole company full of co-founders. Why not? :)
May the Force be with you.
