How To Find A Co-Founder For Your Startup In 2022 - Failory

Finding a co-founder might be the most important early decision you make; and also the hardest.

The right partner can push your ideas further, share the weight of execution, and make fundraising way easier. The wrong one? That’s how startups implode before they even begin.

In this guide, we’ll break down how to find a co-founder, where to look, what to look for, and how to make sure you’re aligned before you commit.

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Why Have a Co-Founder?

Before we dive into how to find a co-founder for your startup, let’s take a look at all the reasons why you should find a co-founder.

For starters, companies with co-founders tend to be more productive than startups where just one founder is responsible for everything. When you’re able to divide the most important work between at least two people, you can get much more done in less time.

Sure, you can always hire employees to tackle certain tasks, but there are some things that only founders can and should be doing, such as meeting with investors and defining overall business strategies.

Not only does having a co-founder save time by dividing up the heavy lifting, it also improves the quality of your work. Simply having another person to bounce ideas off of and brainstorm with can go a long way towards ensuring your startup gets off on the right foot. 

Also, if you partner with a co-founder who has a complementary set of skills to yours (which you should), they can do certain tasks that you might struggle with, take a long time to figure out, or not be able to do at all.

Another reason you should look for a co-founder for your startup is for valuable moral support. 

Launching a brand new company is an emotionally and mentally draining experience, and it can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety when things aren’t going exactly as planned (and they almost never do).

But, when you have another individual who is as invested in the success of your company as you are, they can help lift your spirits and keep you motivated during trying moments. This goes both ways, too — if your co-founder is feeling down or frustrated about something, you can help them find the motivation to push through the difficulties and keep striving for success together.

The final most important reason for bringing a co-founder onboard to your company is that many of the most successful startups throughout history have had co-founders. 

Think about it: Microsoft had Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Apple had Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniack, and Ronald Wayne, Google had Larry Page and Sergey Brin, PayPal had Elon Musk and Peter Thiel… you get the picture.

If that’s not enough to convince you, consider this: a previous analysis we did of 1,000 unicorn companies showed that 755 (75.5%) of them had two or more founders, while just 245 (24.5%) had a single founder.

If you dream of your startup becoming the next unicorn, having a co-founder will greatly increase your odds of earning a spot among the most successful startups of our time by fitting in with their successful formula of having more than one founder.

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Is It Possible To Start Without a Co-Founder?

While it’s certainly true that many of the most successful companies were founded by more than one person, it’s still possible to succeed without a co-founder. For example, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon alone, and never partnered with a co-founder.

However, single founders generally need to have some very specific personality traits and characteristics in order to succeed on their own. 

For one, they usually firmly believe in and feel very strongly about the problem they are solving with their companies, often because it is a personal problem or one that feels close to home for them. This drives them to put everything into their project until it succeeds, never looking back.

The second trait of successful solo founders is that they have the technical skills and expertise to succeed in advancing their startups all on their own. For instance, they are able to build an MVP, acquire users/customers, and seek out funding without the help of a co-founder.

That being said, just because you start a company without a co-founder doesn’t mean you can’t bring one into your startup later. Many successful startup founders have begun companies on their own, then partnered with a co-founder during an opportune moment.

In fact, the best time to bring a co-founder onboard is typically when you don’t need one — a co-founder can provide a welcome boost of productivity and energy when you and your product/service are already experiencing some success and traction, but need another executive with certain technical skills or other characteristics.

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What To Look For in a Co-Founder?

Whether you want to partner with a co-founder right from the start or you are looking for a co-founder after your company has already been up and running for a while, there are certain things you should look for in a co-founder in order to ensure you choose the right person.

One of the first things you should look for in your co-founder is experience. In order for that individual to be able to scale and grow with the company, they should have the right combination of knowledge and skills (or the capacity to learn them as needed).

This is especially true if there are certain areas of expertise that you lack knowledge and skills in — remember that you should be looking for a co-founder who balances you out and complements you in terms of technical skills and experience.

If you can find a co-founder who has already founded companies in the past, this is a huge bonus, as they will have already experienced many of the things that your startup will be going through in its early days and will know how to solve many common problems.

Another important characteristic to look at in potential co-founders is how they handle stress. As we mentioned earlier, running a startup is inevitably stressful and draining, so you want to partner with someone who isn’t going to break under all that stress.

Of course, it’s hard to know how a complete stranger handles stress, which is one of the reasons why it’s almost always best to partner with someone from your personal network, who you already know well enough to understand how they deal with pressure and challenges.

If you do end up partnering with someone you don’t know that well personally, make sure they have experienced and successfully handled prior stressful work environments. This is when choosing a co-founder who has already founded companies can be an even more ideal option.

Lastly, when you’re talking to potential co-founders, make sure to ask them what their goals and reasons for wanting to start a company are and ensure they align with your own. 

For example, if you want to minimize risks and take a slow, measured approach to building your company, you probably shouldn’t partner with a co-founder who wants to take a lot of risks and push your company forward at an extremely fast pace.

Be cautious of anyone who seems like they want to be a co-founder for egotistical reasons — there are lots of people out there who claim to be “entrepreneurs,” but they don’t have any real skills or experience to back it up.

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Where To Look for Co-Founders?

By now you should have a good understanding of why you should look for a co-founder and how to find a co-founder that complements you and your company, but you’re probably wondering where to find this person.

As we touched on earlier, the best place to start looking for a co-founder is within your personal network. People you’ve worked with, gone to school with, or are friends with make good co-founders because you already have an idea of their personalities and skills and understand how they could fit with you and your company.

However, if you can’t find a co-founder within your personal network, there are other channels to meet one through. These include social networks, co-founder matchmaking sites, startup-oriented online communities, events and conferences, and special programs like startup incubators and startup accelerators.

As you consider how to find a co-founder for your startup, keep in mind that the best time to start looking for a co-founder is before you find yourself in the position of absolutely having to find a co-founder. This allows you to meet the perfect founding partner organically, rather than rushing into a partnership that could be less than ideal and end up hurting your business.