Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

You Can’t Manufacture Trust | Matt MacInnis

19 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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In this excerpt, the speaker emphasizes that trust cannot be manufactured when recruiting a co‑founder or a chief operating officer. Whether a founder is “dating” a potential co‑founder or a CEO is seeking a COO, the reality is that if a person with the required level of trust does not exist, the leader must accept that fact rather than force a hire. The speaker warns that denying this truth leads to poor decisions, and stresses that the principle applies equally to founders and CEOs.

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One thing that's super clear to me, you know, whether it's about a founder looking for a co founder, they call it founder dating, or whether it's about a CEO who thinks he or she wants a coo, you can't manufacture trust. It's an inconvenient truth that if you think you need someone in one of these roles, co founder or coo, if no one of that level of trust is available to you in the world, then you need to face that reality as opposed to deny it and make a decision about bringing somebody in anyway. I think that's like, true on the CEO side, and it's true on the COO side.