How I Found My Co-Founders: Lessons from Six Months of ‘Co-Founder Dating’
Building the right founding team is both an art and a science.
As an entrepreneur who wants to bring to life a vision for the future, one of the first and most important tasks is to assemble the early team needed to take the first steps towards that vision. Given I have just gone through that process and spent a lot of thought and effort over 6 months, I wanted to share some of my learnings and take-aways.
DO I NEED A CO-FOUNDER?
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together" is an African proverb I had often heard. Translated to the context of building a company, I never considered going it alone. Having observed the two co-founders of N26, Valentin and Max, for such a long time, I knew that the company wouldn't have come this far if it weren't for them holding together and realigning even in the toughest of moments.
The N26 Example
The "need" for a co-founder goes beyond the obvious reason of having a complementary skillset between business and technology. They were both business founders, yet complemented each other from a personality perspective as well as from skillsets outside of the technology realm. One had a very strong intuition for design, brand, product, user experience, and PR, while the other excelled at operations, legal, finance, and regulatory aspects.
The Gousto Contrast
When I joined Gousto, Timo was the only founder. He had had two other co-founders very early on, but for the last 10 years, he was the solo founder. Instead of relying on co-founders, he built a great leadership team, some of whom have been with the company for over 10 years. Timo challenged my assumption of needing co-founders and pointed out that most co-founders split up—a significant cause of startup failure.
Research supports Timo’s point. A Harvard Business Review study indicates that 65% of high-potential startups fail due to conflict among co-founders. Additionally, 43% of founders in successful startups end up buying out their co-founders due to differences in values or company direction.
So, is having a co-founder always the right move? Not necessarily. But if you find the right person and are truly aligned, it can be a huge advantage. Sounds a bit like dating, right? 😉
WHO DO I NEED?
My journey to find the right co-founding team was anything but a straight line. For years, I assumed the process would be simple—I already had two people from my N26 days in mind who I felt a strong alignment with. I was convinced one of them would be my co-founder, regardless of the type of business we built.
But, as with dating, timing matters. One of them started their own company before I was ready. When I was finally ready to take the leap, the other wasn't. So, I found myself doing something I thought I would never have to do—"dating" to find co-founders.
Clarifying the Roles I Needed
At this point, I had clarity on the broad direction I wanted to go: health. With science and technology as the core pillars of the business, I knew I needed both a medical and a technical co-founder. That meant I would be looking for a team of three.
On the medical side, I already had had one person in mind who inspired me a lot and I have deep trust, respect and admiration for. But on the technical side, I didn’t know anyone from my past who fit the bill. This realization was daunting.
Of course, many people who asked me about my search process were in the same boat: they didn’t already have someone obvious from their past to bring on board. And given the high founder "divorce" rate, there is something to be said about choosing someone you have worked with before. But if that’s not the case, you can still run a structured process to accelerate the understanding of true alignment.
WHEN IS THE RIGHT TIME TO LOOK FOR CO-FOUNDERS?
Opinions differ wildly on this question. Some suggest that business founders should validate their idea before bringing on a technical co-founder. The logic is that technical talent prefers to join when the idea has been sufficiently de-risked and that what you end up building can require a specific set of technical expertise. Others say you should choose the person first and figure out the idea together.
My Perspective
I lean much closer to the "co-founder before concrete idea" camp. Why? Because the business will inevitably change over time. Having someone adaptable, with aligned values and a complementary skillset, makes you more "antifragile"—to borrow a term from Nassim Taleb—than having someone who is only a good fit for a specific, well-defined idea.
Also, if someone co-develops the idea, their ownership and commitment are likely to be much stronger. However, if you have the time, don't hesitate to work with a designer or researcher to deepen your understanding of the problem space while you look for co-founders.
HOW DID I ACTUALLY FIND MY CO-FOUNDERS?
Before starting, I spoke with both business and tech co-founders (even those unavailable) to clarify what I was looking for: skill sets, spikes, and differentiation between good vs. great candidates. This helped me draft a clear one-pager of what I was looking for that I could then use for outreach in my network. Questions I worked through at this stage were: Am I looking for someone who is a backend / data / AI wizard?; or is this someone with more frontend and product management experience? Hardware/ software? Does it matter that they worked in a regulated industry before? Leadership experience? Have they been a technical co-founder before? With a rough direction on all of those questions, I embarked on the process (and will talk about the sources of potential candidates right afterwards).
Process Structure
Committing to a co-founder is far more critical than regular hiring, as it’s much less reversible. Here’s how I structured my process:
1) 30 min intro call (video) to assess general chemistry and basic fit
2) 60 min follow up call, or if based in the same city, in person meeting to share my vision in more detail, understand some of the core experiences and motivations of the other person more deeply. After this point comes a fairly big commitment, so spending these extra 60 min was key for me. I only moved to the next stage with 6 out of 45 candidates that I had taken to this stage.
3) Take home "co-founder dating questionnaire". I used this questionnaire (downloadable PDF available just under the fold of the page) to go really deep. We would fill these out by ourselves (20+ pages) and once we both were done, share it with each other in order not to influence our answers. I found that then talking through the answers takes roughly 5 hours. I split this over 2-3 sessions, starting with roadblocks (e.g. location to build; reasons to build; financial expectations; time commitments; ...) and sometimes after a first 2 hour session focusing on the main misalignments, we ended the process.
4) After the co-founder questionnaire, we would each write a one pager with 3 main reasons to be excited and 3 main concerns, again sharing it with each other after both were completed in order not to influence each other's answers.
5) From there, if both were more excited than concerned, we would organise a full day in person workshop. This stage I only reached with 2 candidates because the questionnaire really filters out very well. The agenda of that day was focused on 1, vision; 2, lean canvas creation and discussion to capture the cornerstones of the business model and idea as they stand at that moment; 3, culture and values as well as practical follow ups from the questionnaire if any; 4, tech "deep dive" (me asking key questions about tech and listening to the approaches), 5) dinner / social.
6) After that I went into trial work, e.g. some user research, or a workshop with the third co-founder / other team member(s) if already in place to get a feeling for an actual collaborative situation.
7) Reference calls with former peers/ bosses/ direct reports. Also, I would offer a call with the significant other which in one case was taken up and turned out to be very valuable, so that the s.o. of my co-founder felt heard and considered in this big decision as well as got a feeling for me and who I am.
--> I then made the decision. From there until incorporation, we were in committed trial work (like when you are engaged - you are not dating other people anymore and unless something fundamentally goes wrong, you will embark on the journey together!). We are also planning one weekend getaway with the families/ significant others of all co-founders to further build understanding of our personal lives. I am excited about that actually happening next weekend!
Sources of Potential Candidates
Personal Network: Depending on your background, prior experience and network, you will have different starting points on this. In my case, I am very well connected in the ecosystem thanks to my almost 10 years of experience as an operator in one of the fastest growing scale ups in Europe. I was very fortunate to be able to ask a strong network founders / operators and VCs to help me kick off the search. VCs have an opportunity to prove their value to you, so I found some of them also put in quite some effort. My learning here ultimately was that the proximity of the connection plays a huge role (the ultimately successful intro for my technical co-founder came from one of my best friends who is a founder too).That is also totally fair. Imagine you meet someone for half an hour and then they ask you to help them with their co-founder search. You are less likely to go all in than if your best friend asks you. Keep that in mind and find the right balance between going out there and making sure you get a feeling for the market but then focus on the quality of the connections.
Forums: Some people in my network offered me to post my one-pager in certain "CTO" forums. In my experience, that did not yield quality candidates. Most were fractional CTOs looking for a freelance job rather than co-founder material.
Other Platforms: YC’s co-founder matching platform is promising but I didn't use it personally. Programs like Antler, Entrepreneur First, and Techstars may work but often struggle to attract top-tier talent (I would say this is true especially for experienced talent. So, if you are very early in your career, you can certainly find talented and like-minded people there and it can serve as a great starting point!). Merantix (Berlin) stood out for pairing tier-1 business founders (often serial entrepreneurs) with tailored tech co-founders. I still had the intuition to rely on my network and find my own way...
Outcome
And that is how I met... Ben! Ben stood out with his thoughtfulness and depth of experience from the beginning. He had built two health-tech companies before, one as founding team member at Elvie for close to 10 years that scaled to almost 400 people, 100mn in revenue and millions of customers, showing entrepreneurial skills, grit, resilience as well as leadership skills in addition to being a passionate builder always having continued to code himself. He had built software and hardware. He had led product and design teams in addition to engineering teams. On top of that, Ben is simply a builder in every regard of life. I am hugely excited and grateful to have him as a partner on this journey!
Joining Forces with my Medical Co-Founder
Finally, on the medical side, the situation was different. I have known Reinhold for six years and had met him through a mutual friend back in 2019. We got along very well and I became his client. He is a sport scientist and medical doctor who coached olympic medallists of the Austrian winter olympics team as well as hundreds of “ordinary” clients with challenging conditions who couldn't resolve the root cause of their symptoms in the traditional healthcare system. Our work together had a profound impact in my life and was a big inspiration for me to decide that health is the industry I want to dedicate my energy as a founder to. He is someone who is very impact driven and was always wondering if there was a way for him to scale the massive impact he had with his clients. Once we saw that we have a very aligned vision of the future we started exploring if we could come together as co-founders. Very important there was not just to assume because we knew each other as friends and through the past client relationship that we would be a perfect fit as co-founders. We hence also went through the co-founder dating questionnaire and learned a lot about each other that we didn't know. After deep consideration, he decided to leave the conventional path as a medical doctor in the hospital and join me as medical co-founder!
Final Thought
Final thought - if you are three co-founders you of course have to ensure compatibility between the two other co-founders as well. Chances are high though, if you follow the above process and you are compatible with them respectively, that they will also be compatible with each other. It was a huge pleasure and joy for me when we spent a day together for the first time and I could see the energy between them be as strong as it was between me and them individually!