Co-Founder Networking 101: How Find a Business Partner

Hey everybody, how we doing? There's a lot of us in here tonight, uh, so as y'all get settled, I, I want you to really get to know each other here in the room. My name is Martin Martinez. I am the entrepreneur in residence for the Founder Institute based in Palo Alto, but I'm coming to you live from Austin, Texas, Lone Star State. Uh, we do have some Texas people, please let me know. I like making new friends, but also all your new friends around the world. As you're already starting to see down here at the bottom, you got this little emoji button. Click that. I like to see the emojis come up. You have a variety of them. Oh, y'all are getting it done. This is fun, isn't it? Y'all are already doing the right thing, ladies and gentlemen. Y'all are putting and greeting each other. Let us know where you're coming from. Founder Institute has been around for well over a decade. We have 200 chapters in 65 countries around the world, and we want to represent every continent, maybe even Antarctica. I don't know, there's people down there, we'll see. So tell me in the chat, where are y'all coming from? Right on. Yeah, we got people from all around the world. Got people from China over here. Looks like we got North America, South America. Let me know, let me know. So if you're here for the co-founder networking event, you are in the right place. Um, welcome to Airmeet. If this is your first time on Airmeet, it is an online networking and event platform that allows us to deliver some really great content like what you're about to see here tonight, but also connect with each other at virtual tables based on topics and skills and interests. Got a variety of tables that I'm sure a few of you are already sitting at, but also the ability to go one-on-one and meet people individually for, uh, for quick conversations. We'll get into that after this quick presentation. I promise you I'll be as as possible. We want to really understand first, you know, what does it mean to find a co-founder? What does it mean to actually have that relationship? Some easy pitfalls to avoid and basic ground rules that you should lay out when you're establishing that co-founder relationship. Because at the end of the day, many startups fail overall because of the team dynamics. They just do not work. So let's dive right in. I'm going to share a little bit. I don't really necessarily share screens all that time. But let's dive into this. Okay, ladies and gentlemen. So as you could clearly see, this is our agenda for the night. I'm a little box over here now to your right. Good morning. Good morning, Howard. Tell us what side of the world you're coming from. Southeast, we got Harold out of the southeast part of the US. Dropping LinkedIn, Stephanie. That's a good way to connect right now. I love it. So I'm going to spend 15-20 minutes max on this quick presentation teaching you about co-founder dynamics, how to formalize this relationship, and of course, what you should be doing when I wrap up so that you could find that co-founder here in the room. We got a big group already. We're sitting at 143 people now in the room all over the world. I love this, this little community of ours. So I hope you do too. Second part, of course, is gonna be the networking piece. As I mentioned, I'll cover a little bit more about that later. Uh, but if you haven't already, if you checked your emails as you joined this, download that co-founder worksheet. It'll be very helpful and useful as you're having conversations, moving from table to table and doing the one-on-one. So head over to bit.ly/co-founder-worksheet and get that thing ready to go. All right, let's keep moving. All right, so when we look to classic team dynamics for startups, it falls under 3 basic architectures. Types: the hackers, the hustlers, and the hipsters. Hackers are those coders. They're behind the scenes. They're, they're iterating over and over again. They're shipping, shipping products, features, just building based on the customer data. But they can't do it alone. You need those hustlers that are out there driving the market, getting customers on board, inevitably raising funding so that you can grow the team and build beyond these basic archetype skill sets that you don't necessarily have to do all the things, because that's what you're going to have to do when you're building a startup. Last but not least are those hipsters. They're helping design the product, making it look great. They're talking to customers and figuring out the best way to get it in front of customers, taking that feedback, working with, uh, working with the hackers to actually get this thing into reality. So they all work together. Inevitably, if you're in the right spot doing the right things, you're going to be in that middle, that little dabbing unicorn. Unicorn that we got, right? Because that's what everybody wants to do, uh, get to that billionaire unicorn territory. All right, so, uh, big pitfall that I see all the time early on with co-founders or people trying to find co-founders is they're only looking for skill sets. They come to me and they say, Martine, I need a Facebook advertising, uh, you know, specialist. Oh, Martine, I need— I just need a coder to build my website. And that's all fun and great, but if you're just looking for skill sets, you're gonna be missing out on a lot of other things as you work with this person. You're gonna realize that very quickly. 'Cause if you're only looking for skill sets and not all the other fundamentals that I'm about to get into, you're gonna be in for a bad time, ladies and gentlemen. So let's avoid that, okay? Let's avoid that. So what, how do you look beyond skill sets? How do you dig deeper into this methodology as you develop? A co-founder relationship with somebody? It starts by actually looking at the working styles. So like, for example, you know, we have two co-founders for the Founder Institute, Adeo Ressi and Jonathan Grecian. Jonathan is our newly CEO transitioning from co-founder. He's the product guy, he's the marketer, he loves to be behind the scenes, he loves building the core products and the curriculum that we use every day to help founders like you build the next enduring company all around the world. While Adeo is the visionary, he's painting the picture, he's sitting on stages like at South by Southwest talking to thousands of people about his vision of the future. They work really well together. John's the introvert, Adeo's the extrovert. But in terms of working styles, they work similar hours, they communicate very effectively. It's not uncommon. That they're talking to each other at 3 o'clock in the morning wherever apart the world they are. And they have really clear expectations on the roles and responsibilities that each of them are going to carry to move the ship forward. So working styles are very, very important when you're identifying co-founders. Think of it like a marriage. It truly is. In some cases, if you're already married, you might be hanging out with this person more than that spouse. It's true. It's very much true. They're going to be in your life for a very long time. So if you're just looking for somebody that can code or do Instagram ads, you're going to sell yourself short. You're going to sell your product or your service short, and inevitably you're just going to be looking for somebody else 3, 6 months later. So working styles are very important. Talk to the person that you think is going to be your co-founder and really identify whether or not your styles are going to align with each other. Okay, that makes sense. Give me some emojis if it does. If it doesn't, you know, it's fine. I forgive you. So the next thing is, this is a technical term, it's called FSO people. They figure shit out. As I mentioned in the beginning, all of you are going to have to do a lot of different things. You have to take over specific roles and do stuff based on those hacker, hipster, and hustler archetypes. Inevitably, as you start to grow and get revenue and customers and raise money, you can start to delegate those things. But early on, you're gonna have to be in there in the weeds. You're gonna have to get that shit done, and you're gonna have to lean on each other, especially when those times are gonna get really tough and very stressful. Building a company is one of the hardest things you can do, ladies and gentlemen. It really is. And, uh, and if you have people that can— that you align with your working styles, but that also understand that in order for us to be successful, we have to do the hard things, we have to do things that might push us to the limit and things that might push us out of our comfort zones, you're going to be much more successful that way. So identify— avoid people personally. I've dealt with this personally, starting companies and exiting them myself, building teams. Avoid people that just say, oh, that's not in my job description, oh, that, that's not what I signed up for, or this is all what's always been done. Avoid those people because, you know, they're B players. They're not going to push themselves forward, and they're going to try and just hand off that, that stuff that's really hard to do on one of the other teammates whose priorities may not really align with, with the goals that need to be achieved. So figure shit out, ladies and gentlemen. I promise you, you get enough of those, you get, you get some core group of people on doing that, and you get to a point of success, you can finally hire people to delegate that workout. But you got to learn how to do it at the beginning, because if you don't know how to do it in the beginning, how can you possibly educate and manage somebody inevitably who can? That makes sense. Again, emojis all around, that helps me really understand if you know and are enjoying this content this evening. Let's keep moving again because I want you all to meet each other. Uh, so how do you formalize this relationship? It's pretty simple, but it's also not as obvious as you would expect. I have made this mistake personally. Friendships don't necessarily equate to a great business partner. I started a company with a really close friend, but we did not— we just kind of dove in together. We didn't really, we had pretty decent working styles, but we kind of lacked certain communication things and we just kind of dove in and didn't really start with these test projects. So as you start to really identify people, don't just go with the low-hanging fruit that might be your friends, 'cause if it doesn't work out, you may burn those bridges, you may lose those friendships. And unless y'all are very clear on what those expectations are, and that friendship's gonna evolve into something different. Um, and, uh, and it's very difficult to separate the friendship from the business relationship, especially when things get very stressful. Again, uh, is this friend somebody you want to marry? Because it's going to feel like a marriage. It's going to feel like a marriage. So think about that. You're going to be spending a lot of time with this person. So figure out— a test drive is mandatory. Start in these incremental projects. If you're really— again, if you find somebody that's really good on the marketing and the digital stuff, uh, Start with 30-day project, then a 60-day, then a 90-day. As you start to really develop what's that communication style gonna be like, what's that working style gonna be like? Are the expectations being met over those 30-day projects, that 60-day project, that 90-day project? And if so, then you can start to move forward on larger initiatives. And then you're really starting to understand, you know, early on, again, it's a marriage. You don't just immediately get married. It's a dating process. So as you start to think of it that way and you're building this relationship together, because that's truly what it is, um, you'll be more confident in 6 months, 8 months, a year down the road whether or not this is truly going to be a co-founder that's going to follow you, with you, next to you for the next 5, 10 years as you build this world-changing thing, whatever it is, for whoever it is around the world. We're sitting at about 156 people now Please say hi to each other. Again, it's not just me yakking about— y'all are gonna have a lot of fun later on here in just a few minutes. So again, if this makes sense, this jives, um, make sure, especially if you meet somebody here tonight at the tables, um, start small. Start at something actionable, something measurable, and in small increments, uh, in 30, 60, and 90-day formats. That way you'll really know if this is somebody you want to move forward with for the long term. Cool. So how do you ensure that compatibility? I'm glad you asked, everybody. We have another little worksheet that can be helpful to you. We'll drop it in the chat here as our producer in the back behind the scenes might be able to do for us. So really have some existential questions. This is very similar stuff that you're talking to a romantic partner with. What are your motivations? What drives you? Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 20 years? What are the priorities that you have right now versus the priorities that you wanna have down the road. These are all very critical things because it allows you to manage the expectations of what the business needs are gonna be as well as what the co-founder needs are gonna be. Discuss what that planning's gonna look like. Where does that person want to be? Again, in like 5, 10 years, do they wanna have a family and kids and a lot of wealth? Do they wanna take the safe bet or do they just wanna, to Elon Musk's point, beat the glass and stare into the abyss, um, solo until they get it right, and then they'll think about it later. These are actually very important questions that you need to understand in the beginning when you're working with somebody for upwards of 60, 80 hours a week. And if finances are very difficult, you know, maybe starting startup, uh, and biting that bullet, uh, for a number of years might not be a great option for them. And that might— and that might not translate into being a great co-founder either. And then last, and this is the most important, you really need to be clear about those roles and responsibilities. Who's gonna be in charge of what? Who's gonna be, who's gonna be, where's the final decision gonna be made by whoever it's gonna be? And list these out, put them on paper. I've made this mistake before, ladies and gentlemen. If you don't put it on paper, and when push comes to shove and hard decisions get to be met, have to be made, no decisions will get made. So think about those questions. We have a whole list of them. Download this worksheet at bit.ly/34-questions and have an honest and frank conversation with the people that you want to bring on as co-founders. That make sense? That fine? We'll have that link out there for you shortly. So, um, and this is another big thing, uh, 50/50 splits, as equitable as you want this to be, as mutually beneficial as you want this to be. 50/50 splits will inevitably only end in pain for both of you, and for a variety of reasons. But the most important one is someone's going to have to make a decision that changes the— you're going to have arguments, you're going to have conflicts, and you have to get to a resolution and move forward very quickly. And if a 50/50 split is in place on paper, you will not be able to actually move forward. Someone's going to have to be that decision maker that actually takes those tough options, evaluates them, and makes the decision for the benefit of the company. So we have another great spreadsheet. We love spreadsheets here at Founder Institute. So download this next one. It's got all— it's a great worksheet. You can enter in the roles, time commitments, how much, how much time one person's committing versus another, and you can actually, uh, formalize what an equity split is actually going to look like. Um, you know, if you want to make it as, as equitable as possible, 49-51. The person that's 51 is obviously going to be the one that makes that final decision. And at the end of the day, these frank and honest conversations with a co-founder or a co-founding team early on will make everybody on the same page right at the beginning. And you will— I promise you, ladies and gentlemen, I promise you that feelings will not be hurt because you laid it out very much at the beginning. And the expectations are laid bare right at the beginning. So check out that worksheet and have all this stuff in your back pocket when you get into the networking lounge, which I promise you is coming right up here soon, and, and have some fun. So this is our CEO, Jonathan. This is the secret on finding co-founders or not finding co-founders. If you think, oh, I'm not ready yet, I need to build, I need to find that CMO marketer, I got to find that technical co-founder before I can do anything. No, no, that's nonsense, ladies and gentlemen. John says, you know, that's a terrible excuse, and I agree with him. You should be able to start building right now, and you can. You don't need technical skills to start building. You don't need marketing and sales skills to start building, uh, because we have— there are tons of resources. Screenshot this if you want. We'll have the video up for you in 48 hours. But if you're— if you just want to get started right now, ladies and gentlemen, screenshot this. There are tons of no-code app solutions like Bubble and Glide, and there's a ton of them right there that you could just already start plugging and play. You don't need a coding degree, you don't need to study computer science at Stanford, start building something that you can test out and show off as a prototype. Inevitably it'll turn into something once you get successful in momentum, but that's not an excuse. Oh, I don't know how to code, so I'm not going to do it. It's nonsense, y'all. If you really believe in this you can already pick some stuff off the shelf. There are websites that you can spin up in an hour using Squarespace, WordPress, whatever. Uh, and you, if you have a product you want to sell directly to customers, Shopify, you can do that in 30 minutes. And places to track all this stuff, Google Sheets, ways to manage all this, forms to capture data, marketplaces to, to get more exposure, and things like Zapier and Automate.io to connect all this stuff together. You could do all this stuff in a week if you really planned it out properly, and you'd have something else to show off before your co-founder even walks in through the door. It's entirely possible, and you can do this right now, uh, but wait until the networking event's over and then go, then go and start on that if you haven't already. 160 people now in the room. Welcome if you're just joining us. If you're at the co-founder networking event, you are in the right place. I promise you're almost done. We are almost done. So as I mentioned, not having a co-founder is not an excuse, and not having a community is an excuse either, because there are tons of them out there. Start diving into LinkedIn groups, connect with people on LinkedIn. There are tons of Slack and Discord communities based on whatever topic that you're interested in that you wanna start a company on. You can just dive in and start communicating with people saying, hey, this is what we're doing, this is what we're looking for. There are tons of virtual and now in-person events coming back. You can go and start networking with people that also share similar values. You might have similar working styles and skill sets that are gonna allow you to really align and build something that matters. And of course, Founder Institute, shameless plug, applications are open for a lot of fall and spring, fall 2021 and spring 2022 programs. You should go check those out. More than likely you're going to have an FI community near you that can show you, uh, the way to actually do this in a very actionable step-by-step method. Um, so that— but there's plenty more from there. This is just an example, ladies and gentlemen, just the communities that are waiting for you, because you might find your co-founder, if not in here, in one of these. So promise you, almost about done. So it's time for part 2. Time for part 2. I think this was record time, Beta. Beta is our producer behind the scenes. Tell everybody, Beta, uh, hello. She's great. Uh, so as you can clearly see, what's going to happen is I'm going to wrap this up here in a couple seconds. I'm going to disappear into the ether, and what you're going to see is one of these boxes right here. Okay, you're gonna have all these little virtual tables. Um, if this is your first time on Airmeet, uh, or, or if it's your 50th time on Airmeet, it's really, really fun. There's two ways you can interact with people. All right, you sit on these tables, you can do the one-on-one conversation, but for optimum experience, maybe some of you are watching this on a phone, there's already a 15-second delay. If that's the case, you won't be able to actually participate in the networking piece if you're just on a mobile device like a phone. For optimum experience, you're going to want to use a Chrome or Firefox tablet. Airmeet's still very much startup mode, does not really work well with other browsers, so if If you are on a browser and really wanna get into this networking piece, I highly recommend Chrome, I highly recommend Firefox. Tablets are working now too. So jump around all the tables, you're gonna see all these different topics based on what needs or expertise you're willing to provide or looking for. So please jump in there and check those out. But let's also lay some ground rules out too. And if you, again, if you're looking for somebody in particular, use this chat right here, right here. Use that right there. I'm not seeing a lot of action. Y'all should totally be talking to each other already, prime each other up and get that done. Uh, click on that chat, start connecting right before this ends, right? So, uh, here's some basic ground rules on how to get that started. It's easy. So, and really, I want you all to be mindful of each other. You know, we are a community of people that care and support each other, and, uh, we want you to ensure that you're going to have a great experience. I'm— you may see me pop from table to table However, it's important that you also self-regulate and manage each other. We're all adults here, at least I hope. So, so let's act like it. All right, start with that worksheet. Should already be in your back pocket on another tab somewhere else, but if you haven't yet, you're just joining us, bit.ly/co-founder-worksheet, and, and use that as your basic reference point. Start by briefly describing the business. Keep it simple. Try to keep it under a sentence. Because if you're droning it on for a long time, dropping all this jargon and eating up everybody else's speaking time, you're not really going to get anyone that really connects with you, unfortunately. I've just seen it so many times in the virtual world that it's just not going to work, okay? So start with something simple. My company blank is developing some kind of refined offer. And again, don't use all these crazy buzzwords— blockchain, AI power, blah blah blah. Just say it's a website. We all know it's a website. Say it's a mobile application, it's a mobile application. Don't get too cute on it 'cause you wanna get to the point, you want people to understand what you're doing very quickly and then you, and when they ask questions, then you can get a little bit more elaborate. Be clear on the audience too. Don't be too generic, just don't say like dogs or women, you know, be a little bit more specific on who in that subset 'cause the clearer, the more defined of an audience you have, the clearer of a picture you're gonna be able to paint. Paint when you are articulating this. Of course, always focus on this problem. People don't buy, uh, products, they buy solutions to problems. So what is that problem you're really trying to solve? You're going to get some feedback from people that might be struggling with this problem. They might already have solutions out there that they're paying for, or that— and they— then they might suck. So as you listen, figure out why that sucks, and then understand what's that secret sauce that differentiates you. From the things that might already be out there, if there are things out there. But more than likely, 99% of the time, there's already stuff out there. So why are you different? Okay, provide the insight as to why you're doing this. Again, why, why are you building this? And what are you looking for in a co-founder based on your own skill sets, backgrounds, and expertise? What would you like to complement you, right? And then also, again, we're adults here. Don't be a jerk. Don't, don't mic hog. Don't take up the whole time, try to spend a few, just about 3 minutes describing it. Because you're going to get a lot more value listening to other people and their perspectives, offering their feedback, than if you just drone on and on and on and on. Inevitably, they're just going to leave the table. And you're going to be sitting there all alone. And we don't want that to happen, ladies and gentlemen, now do we? That's right. That's right. So I told you this would be quick. I want y'all to go have fun. If you really liked this event, we hope you come back for more. And if you want to learn more about Founder Institute, maybe join some of these upcoming winter or fall, winter and spring programs in the months ahead. Head on over to fi.co/join/cofounder. You'll be able to apply for the program for free in a city of your choice. They're all still being held virtually. We currently just launched our most recent fall Texas program that's combining all of our cities in the Lone Star State. Still holding them virtually, but while having in-person networking events weekly so that you get to connect with people in your area and really start developing those relationships. I promise you, I kid you not, many people that have joined the FI program have met their co-founder in it. I've seen it more often than not, and I've quite seen it honestly fundamentally change people's lives too. It's a very amazing organization. I'm honored to be a part of it for so long, and hopefully we'll get to see you at more of these too. So that's it for me, ladies and gentlemen. I promised you this was going to be quick, and I lived up to that expectation, I hope. So Veda is going to be closing this out for us. I'm going to disappear out into the ether, and then these tables are going to pop right back up in front of you. So I encourage you all, have some fun, stick around. We're going to keep this room open for a while, longer than what might be saying on the event invite, because sometimes we come back and then y'all are just still here hours later. I think record is 12 hours later, there were still like 40 people in this room, believe it or not. So we want to keep that for you. So wherever it is you are, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good night. And my name is Martin, EIR over at FI. Hope to see you all again. Hope to see some of you in person if you find yourself in the Austin, Texas area. I definitely find myself around at more events these days. But otherwise, you take care of yourself, you take care of each other, keep building the thing that you know is important for the people that you're trying to serve, and we'll see you next time.