Take care of your co-founder relationship to take care of yourself
You embark on a journey
Starting a business is an exciting but challenging endeavour. Entrepreneurs face many uncertainties and pressures, which can affect their mental well-being. How do founders cope with these challenges? And what role do their relationships with co-founders and investors play in their well-being?
It's dangerous to go alone! Take a co-founder. Having a co-founder is advantageous for many different reasons. They help focus, challenge ideas, share the workload and share some of the pain. They keep you accountable and motivated. On the other hand, co-founder relationships feel a lot like marriages with the same challenges in communication and the same risks for a malfunctioning relationship. In a way, exchanging co-founders late in the process of starting a company can be more complicated than a divorce that just needs signing a contract.
Co-founder relationships alongside investor-founder relationships define relationships that are unique to startup entrepreneurs. We'll explore the role of investor-founder relationships in another article.
To make it clear: there is no perfect co-founder relationship. As in any relationship, there will be ups and downs. The more passion there is for the project, the more friction there will be. Never have I seen a startup founder team that is successful and constantly harmonious.
What can your co-founder do for you
We took a quantitate and representative look at the relationship between co-founders. We could confirm that the relationship's topology is similar to a marriage, strengthening the point that you should pay close attention to whom you found with.
The quality of relationships between founders and co-founders strongly impacts founders' mental well-being. This relationship accounts for 50% of the total variance in well-being. The most important aspect is the quality of communication with co-founders, which influences general satisfaction and confidence in future success. Regardless of market reality, co-founders can make or break how optimistic entrepreneurs are about their venture.
Interestingly, quality is more important when separating the relationship between availability and quality. Availability in this regard refers to when the co-founder has an open ear or is approachable without considering the interaction. This part is called quality here. Is the co-founder engaged in active and constructive discussion or avoidant?
By a wide margin, the quality of the interaction declasses the availability. Thus, having an open ear is by far not enough to create a healthy co-founder relationship. It requires work and taking the conversations to complex topics that might hurt.
What you should do now
Co-founders need to establish a professional relationship before committing to a foundation forever. If this is impossible or does not happen, the results recommend permanently working on one's communication skills and the relationship. In fact, these two activities seem to be among the best activities to improve one's mental health as a founder. Conversely, no amount of yoga, meditation or Buddha Bowl can compensate for a poor relationship with a co-founder. To take care of yourself, you must take care of your co-founder. Trying other – well-intentioned – means of mental well-being and mindfulness will perish in the eye of a non-healthy co-founder relationship. There is simply no alternative to this.
Suppose everything fails, and you find that your values and goals are just too far apart. In that case, the reasonable thing for your company and your sanity is still to rip off the band-aid and part ways.
The foundations of this article
The data from this article comes from an original study conducted in a PhD project. The study surveyed 295 startup founders from the DACH region in November and December 2022. The survey measured the founders' mental well-being using a well-established scale (GHQ-12) and their relationships with co-founders and investors using two dimensions: availability and communication quality. The study also controlled for various economic and demographic factors. By comparing the results with the German Startup Monitor - a quasi-complete survey of German startups - the researchers ensured that the participants represented the German startup landscape.
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