4 tips to choose your cofounder
June 24, 2019
4 tips on how to choose the right cofounder for your entrepreneurial idea
Co-founders play a vital role in establishing and operating start-ups. Finding the right co-founders is a tough task for many entrepreneurs, which needs patience and caution.
Especially, selecting the right co-founder is an important step in entrepreneurship. Here are few dos and don’ts for choosing the right cofounders.
Dos:
Do analyze yourself deeply
Before searching for co-founders, entrepreneurs should analyze themselves to assess their weaknesses and strengths. Your ability to focus on doing only what you’re best at will have a strong impact on how successful you’ll become within your business.
In this way, entrepreneurs can understand what kinds of co-founders with complementary skills and abilities they need to have for their dream founding team.
For example, if a dentistry professor wants to develop a dental company, it will be wiser to have a cofounder who is a marketing expert. Another example is if the founder is very creative, it will be better to find someone who is more pragmatic.
Do meet people without fear of pitching your project
Networking is vital for entrepreneurship. Networking is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to connect with people who have the skill sets they need or who have the right contacts to grow the business, to gauge the interest of others for their projects, and to get valuable feedback from others to improve and grow.
Besides events such as entrepreneurship conferences, demo days, and startups workshops, digital platforms like IdeasVoice help to connect to potential co-founders.
Don’ts:
Don’t make your friends your co-founders
According to “Will You Marry Me? The Art Of Choosing A Cofounder,” a common mistake for entrepreneurs is choosing among their friends to find their co-founders.
This type of relationship is risky. Firstly, it may ruin the friendship in case of business failure or business arguments. Secondly, friendship may alter the rational judgment of each other. Because of emotional distortions, the cofounders may refrain from expressing different opinions to avoid disagreements because of friendship loyalty. Such conscious and unconscious inhibition may lead to wrong decisions.
Don’t focus only on technical skills
Just as mentioned above, co-founders’ skill sets are important. However, having merely the needed skill sets is not enough. The emotional connection among co-founders is also an indispensable part in entrepreneurship. Bill Gates and Paul Allen have similar strong interests in computers. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield both have a passion for food. These co-founders share similar interests. That’s one of the reasons why their business succeeded. Not every entrepreneur is lucky enough to find a co-founder who shares similar interests. But, as suggested by “How to Find the Perfect Co-Founder? The Startup Process,” an entrepreneur should work with someone he or she admires. Thus, it is vital for an entrepreneur to spend time with co-founder candidates to know them better, and to see if they are suitable.
Having said this, IdeasVoice can help entrepreneurs in various aspects:
- You can learn about the technical skills of the potential cofounders as well as their abilities and achievements.
- With our automatic matching algorithm, we send recommendations of complementary profiles to our premium members. Additionally, it ranks the profiles according to their responsiveness and professional behavior on the platform.
- Furthermore, by joining our community, we encourage the founder to interact with those who have an aligned vision and common interest centers to test how attractive the idea is when posted in the showcase. It’s more than just a network. It’s a platform that fosters collaboration around projects.
By Xinlan Yu of IdeasVoice US