Co-founders complement each other
There is no doubt that partnerships are a good strategy for startups to grow. The key is who you are working with. Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and the venture capitalist that drives Silicon Valley, said this in his book Zero to One. Choosing a co-founder is like getting married, and conflicts between founders can be as messy as a divorce. That’s really true. Partnering is like finding a lifelong partner in a new business. In order not to face the messy ending of a divorce, and in order for my business to not end in failure, which co-founder I meet is really important. You can change business items while doing it, but changing partners is really difficult. For that reason, it is natural that you should be as careful when choosing a co-founder as you would when choosing a spouse to spend the rest of your life with.
In my case, the combination of me, who was a marketer, and a co-founder, who was a developer, was a pretty ideal case of synergy. The two of us met by chance at a high school seniors and juniors reunion. There was no one-to-one relationship before, but strangely, as we talked, my heart continued to be drawn to me. Most of all, it is the possibility of this friend. He’s much younger than me, but I have a feeling that something I don’t have is pulling me strongly. The co-founder who started with me is, in a word, a ball to the bone… I am an entrepreneur from a developer. He is a friend who has already received quite a bit of attention by challenging an internet startup in his 4th year of college through a startup club at Seoul National University. However, when I met the author, I was in a state of despondency after experiencing successive failures in other startups I had tried afterward.
Still, the reason I was drawn to this friend was because I had an intuition that the eyes and insight of the times were really unique. I was preparing to start a business at the time, and as I continued to meet with the co-founder, I realized that my intuition was not wrong. As a marketer, I can say that I was convinced that he was someone who could make up for my shortcomings… . In addition, as we prepared to start a business together and watched for a long time, I think I had a belief that he had a good heart by default. In hindsight, the goodness he had was not so different from his entrepreneurial spirit.
Of course, they had a lot in common. What was particularly important in common was that we both had a DNA that was not afraid of new challenges. I too have always jumped into new jobs and fields during my work life, and it seems that I have more excitement and motivation than fear when trying new fields. The co-founder was also a serial entrepreneur who did not give up his will to start a business despite successive business failures. In the end, we, who had a common sense of challenge and a distinctly different element from each other, have been operating a startup together, and I think that we have literally exerted a synergistic effect.
I once thought that the relationship between me and my partner was somewhat similar to that of Genghis Khan and Yayul Chojae. Along with Zhuge Liang, who assisted Liu Bei, Yayul Chojae, who is counted as one of the most outstanding staff in history, was Genghis Khan’s most prized clerk and served as prime minister of the Yuan Empire for three generations. It is said that the reason Genghis Khan loved and trusted him the most was because of his excellent insight, which spanned all the disciplines of the time, including astronomy, geography, mathematics, Buddhism, and Taoism. And it is said that it was because of his upright personality that he did not hesitate to speak directly in front of the leader.
There is a famous saying left by such a Yayulchojae, which is, “Yeo-il is the first thing in the world, the birthday is the best.” in other words, Gaining a profit is not as good as eliminating a harm, making a job is not as good as getting rid of a jobmeans It is said that it is more important to remove unnecessary parts than to constantly create new things in the rush to achieve results. Yayulchojae said that whenever Genghis Khan was obsessed with his ambitions as a ruler, he gave advice to be on the lookout for new things and creations. You must not hold it in both hands, you must throw it away, you have to throw it away so you can grab something more valuable.
In fact, the relationship between me and the co-founder is very similar in this respect. My co-founder’s eyes for reading technology flows and discovering insights are like ghosts. He has considerable planning skills, and he has the attitude and stamina to not lose his original focus. The downside, however, is that they are a bit hasty and hasty, and tend to touch anything. In a rush to achieve results, I keep working in new fields, and sometimes I can’t focus on the core. In the end, you lose sight of the essence. At such times, it was my role to hold the center. One of the co-founders, who is ahead of the times, is to tune the fast beat of the tempo to the reality. Helping you focus on the core rather than doing multiple things… . That was my role. Like Genghis Khan and Yayulchojae, our company would not have been able to grow until now if the different tendencies and competencies of me and the co-founder had not met to create such a complementary synergy effect.
After all, the first principle of choosing the ideal co-founder is should be complementary to each otheris the point. It should be a relationship that can fill each other’s gaps. In other words, it is not a simple relationship of 1+1=2, but 1+1=3~ more synergy. Ideally, you should choose partners with different core competencies.to be. Just like Apple was able to succeed through synergy between Steve Jobs, who had a design sensibility, and Wozniak, who was a computer geek.
Of course, there are times when people with similar abilities work together. For example, if you start a business as ‘engineer + engineer’ or work in partnership with ‘business administration + business administration’ or ‘designer + designer’… . Of course there are exceptions, but There are many cases in which such unions face considerable difficulties in running a startup. Startups composed only of engineers are prone to encounter difficulties in market research and marketing strategy establishment. In addition, there are situations in which startups made up of only marketers cannot properly produce products that customers want. In particular, if there are no developers among the co-founders, they have no choice but to entrust the development to an external company, so there is a limit to perfectly conveying and implementing their development intentions. Moreover, when unexpected problems arise in products and services, the ability to quickly supplement and respond to them is inevitably lacking. Also, in the case of business partners with similar competencies, conflicts of opinion are much more likely to occur. As much as you are an expert in this field, and I am an expert, there is a lot of potential for clashes with each other.
The second principle of choosing a co-founder is that the way of thinking or the mind must be rightto be. Business is work, but since it is about people working together, it can run only when the heart is right. If your personality and mindset don’t match, it’s hard to keep a relationship going. Of course, someone who has been watching for a long time can have faith in this aspect, but if you are considering a partnership with someone you have just met, you need to spend enough time watching and spending time with that person.
Surprisingly, many startups easily decide to start a joint venture with someone they have met a few times through the introduction of an acquaintance or at a meeting such as a startup academy. In that case, if you face each other and work every day, you may not be able to overcome each other’s different inclinations that you were not aware of, and the relationship may be broken. For that reason, it is essential to let go of the rush and take time to get to know each other.
Conversely, you should not decide to start a business too hastily just because a close friend you have known for a long time, a co-worker, or senior/junior who is a good fit for you likes you. As previously emphasized, The most important question when choosing a co-founder is whether this person can make up for my shortcomings and create synergy. In other words, the most important thing is whether I have the core business competencies that I lack. Even if we can relate to this item simply because we agree with each other, I personally think that it would be better to avoid such a partnership if the partner’s core abilities only overlap with me and are not complemented.
Again, choosing a co-founder is like choosing a spouse to start a new life with. A company that started on a poor foundation with a ‘wrong partner’ is never going to succeed. A business partner, a life partner to go hand in hand on a long and difficult road together.
