Co-Founder Networking: Find a Business Partner Online (May 2021)

Hey everybody, welcome to this co-founder networking event. My name is Jonathan Gritchen. I'm a co-founder of the Founder Institute. We had over 400 people register for this event, uh, so it should be a pretty good time. And I think, uh, you will have an opportunity to meet some pretty interesting people tonight. And, and that's really why we throw this event. So I do see a ton of people have already joined. So let us know where you're joining in from. Again, we're trying to make these events less of a webinar, right? Where it's just one-way communication. We're trying to make them interactive. And I see here Costa Rica. Wow, it's raining and freezing here right now. So Costa Rica is somewhere that I'd like to be. We have someone joining in from China. Welcome from China. Toronto, Curitiba, Brazil, also a beautiful and warm place, and Trinidad, and Kuala Lumpur, North Carolina, and Sochi, Russia, Fremont, California, Austin, Texas, Ottawa. Awesome. All right, well, thank you everyone for joining, and let's get started on our festivities tonight. All right, so here's how this event is going to run. So first of all, I'm going to go through a presentation, try to keep it pretty quick, just around some basic co-founder dynamics, some stuff that I've learned in— let's see, what is it— 2020? '21, so I've been working now in startups, wow, for 17 years. That makes me feel very old, but hopefully I've figured out some decent skills and experience from those 17 years, and I hope to share some of that with you today. And then the second part, which I'm sure a lot of you are joining for, is for the network. All right, as anyone who joined early, you would have seen that there's two ways that you network on this platform. Number 1, you can join essentially this group networking conference room, so to speak, jump into different tables and meet different people there. And also there's random 1-to-1 matching too. But we should try to put some structure around those conversations. From my experience in these online events without structure, it can sort of devolve into just people talking over each other, trying to sell something or whatever. So that's why we have a worksheet. And you can download that worksheet at bit.ly/co-founder-worksheet. That is the worksheet that we recommend that you use tonight when we go into the networking sessions. It will help not only you refine your message and refine what you're trying to get across, but it also hopefully keeps everybody in check so that things can be somewhat efficient, that people can actually meet each other in some kind of structured way. All right, so with that being said, let me get started on co-founder dynamics. So One thing that's interesting about co-founder dynamics, and anyone who knows myself and who knows Adeo Ressi, who's pictured here, who is my co-founder in the Founder Institute, will know that we're very, very, very different people. Okay, Adeo is the extrovert, all right? He's the person that we're throwing on stage at massive events, that's spoken at some of the biggest events in the world. I'm someone who, you know, I'm comfortable in this setting, speaking to a camera, right? But throw me on a stage, I'm gonna be a little bit more uncomfortable, actually, and by a little bit, I mean a lot of it, right? Secondly, you know, just in terms of style, I'm slightly more risk-averse and just trying to make sure that we're crossing the t's, dotting the i's kind of thing, whereas Zedeo is more, you know, is more risk-averse, and then, or sorry, is more of a risk-taker. And then even just in terms of skill sets, Right? He's more sales, tech, and finance. I'm more sort of marketing ops, product design, that kind of thing. But at the end of the day, even though all of those things are different, right? Personality, skill sets, there are certain things that unite. And that's why I think we've made an effective team. And I've been working with him now for almost all of those 17 years that I just mentioned before. And I think number one, it comes down to a couple of things. Number one, it's shared interests, all right, where we're interested in some of the same things. Number 2, it's a similar work ethic, right? A lot of times, and maybe this is a bad thing, but a lot of times when it's late at night, like stupid late at night, right, I'll get on to Slack and he's also there, right? So we have similar work ethic. And then number 3, and I think this is the most important one, is that we're both structured thinkers, okay? Basically, when we tackle a project, we both sort of have the same mindset of like, okay, this is a huge big project. What are the things that need to be done right now? Who are the people that we need to bring involved, right? Like, we just, we attack problems in the same exact way. And as a result, I think that's the first piece of advice that I'll give anybody looking to find a co-founder is that you have to align the style, right? The style of work. You don't have to love the same things out of work. You don't have to love, like, you know, the shared interest that you have, as long as there is an alignment on the style that you get things done. Done, then that will allow you to tackle things like having different views on stuff or having different skill sets. And then the second thing that I'll say here too is that while our skill sets are different, and you'll see this with a lot of co-founding teams, obviously the skill sets are different. I think a lot of people kind of take that skill set attitude way too far. All right, I mean, the number of people that I see at startup events and stuff that are, you know, literally they're just like, I just need someone who knows how to program, right? And then that kind of turns into a team. That's a recipe for disaster, okay? So while skill sets are important, don't only look for skill sets because this is a common right here and this is known as the hacker hustler hipster. Kind of trinity, all right? And I believe that this sort of became popular, at least around Silicon Valley, and has sort of been distilled throughout since then. And it became popular by VCs, all right? So this was VCs, investors, looking at a team who's building a fast-growth software product, you know, what would make them feel more comfortable in this team? Well, they're going to feel more comfortable if they know there's somebody who can sell, they know that somebody who can build, and they know that somebody who can market and design. Right? But what I have seen is that a lot of founders take that— that's more of a top-down look at what a team is after several years of working together. But a lot of founders then try to reverse engineer that and say, okay, I'm just a solo founder with an idea, now I want to build a team from the ground up because eventually I'm going to want investment. And that is a recipe for disaster. Okay? Again, skills are super important. Obviously, right? But if you're using that as your number one gauge for who will be on your team, you're handicapping yourself. You're putting yourself in a bad spot. So really what you should be looking for first and foremost when you're building your startup team, and you might even want to ask yourself if you are this person, as well is FSO people. All right, this is a term that I love to use. FSO means figure shit out. All right, when you are a startup, I don't care if nobody on your team, uh, if everybody hates finance, right? I don't care if everybody hates looking at contracts. I don't care if everybody hates, you know, just dealing with whatever the 900,000 things of minutiae that you're gonna have to do to build the business. You need people on your team that have the ability to number one, be open to learning new things, right? And then number 2, have that attitude of like, yeah, I can figure that shit out, right? I can go onto Google. I'm not gonna become the world's greatest expert on whatever subject this is, but I know how to use Google and I like have a thirst for knowledge and I can go figure this shit out in a couple hours and at least do it to a level of relatively average competency. All right, that's a figure shit out person. And in a very early startup team, those are the people that you need. All right, because the world's greatest email marketer or the world's greatest this designer, they're not going to, you know, help you get over that hump in the very early stages of the business. Now, if the world's greatest email marketer or the world's greatest designer also have that thirst to learn new stuff and are willing to get their hands dirty on a lot of different topics, then that's great. But yeah, you don't want to hire for skill in those early stages because you will see that friction of of style and what you need in that early stage and what maybe people may have in mind when they're starting to build a business. All right, so that's what I have to tell you just about kind of the 101, the very basic 101 of co-founder dynamics. And I want to talk about quickly about formalizing a co-founder, and then we will get into that networking. Now, before I get into the second part of the talk, I just want to reiterate Please, so that you're ready for the second part of the event where you're going to network and meet other people, please download the co-founder worksheet. The URL is bit.ly/co-founder— or bit.ly/co-founder-worksheet, and we're throwing it here into the chat as well. So the idea is that you sort of have that worksheet open while you're doing the networking, and you might want to take a minute or two also to prepare using the materials on that worksheet so that you can get the most out of the networking. That's coming. All right, so finalizing or formalizing a co-founder. Rule number 1: friendship does not equal business partner. Okay, that one is probably the one that is violated the most in terms of a rule. Okay, is this— does being a friend with somebody help ease that relationship? Into a co-founder? Maybe. Probably. Maybe. Sometimes not, actually. Okay. And whoever it is that you're working with, maybe it's even a former colleague that you've worked with, right? And then you have this reason in your head like, oh, well, we've worked together before, so clearly we can start a company together, right? Maybe. Again, right? I think you're probably skipping some of the first steps, but you're certainly not skipping all the steps. And a lot of people think that that allows you to skip all the steps. So a test drive is absolutely mandatory if you want to build a sustainable co-founder relationship, okay? Uh, from my experience, and the best way to do this is to start a quote-unquote project before you go out and build this company, all right? If you say, okay, I'm your co-founder, you're my co-founder, you start building stuff, then there's all this extra weight and baggage. Then it's like, okay, well, who owns what? Who owns this, right? Now we got to sign contracts and stuff. And a lot of those discussions are probably a little bit premature before you even figure out if you guys will work well together, or you ladies will work well together building this business. And the number one thing that I like to recommend is just run an event, okay? And think about it, especially now during, uh, during COVID is with all of the online events that are going on, you can run an event and it's really not that hard. And it's a great test for the relationship because number one, The co-founders are going to have to do a lot of different things that they're not probably comfortable in doing. Okay. Running an event takes a lot of stuff, right? You have to go find speakers, maybe you have to go find sponsors. You got to figure out the platform. You got to launch a website. You have to start, allow people to register for the event. You have to start promoting the event, right? It's just, it just kind of encompasses like a full kind of gamut of what I think it's a decent simulation at least as a first project for testing a co-founder relationship. All right. And you— that's going to force you to say, okay, well, who's going to do what? Who's going to do this? Right. The different people are then going to go do it. And then you see how that event goes. And the other added benefit is that running an event in your space can only benefit your company. All right. So whether you're running a SaaS company, right, start running an event around your space. You're trying to solve X problem. So run an event around solving X problem. Recruit great speakers to speak at this conference, right? And then just run it. All right. So it's, it's a test event that will not only allow you to kind of stress test the relationship that you have with potential co-founders. Meanwhile, you will be validating and actually starting to build the foundation of the business that you're trying to run. All right. So whether you take that recommendation or not of actually putting an event together, which honestly these days is pretty easy. Using online tools like Zoom and just because people are so in tune with these online events, make sure you test out those projects before you assume that a friendship or previous colleague will translate into a future co-founder relationship. All right, and then while that will allow you to stress test it, there are also some other things you could do. I recommend you download this worksheet at bit.ly/34-questions. All right, these are 34 questions for you to ask potential co-founders. And they get into a lot of different things. All right, I think when a lot of times when people start building a business together, they don't start talking about, okay, well, where are you in your life, right? All right, you have 4 kids, I'm a single bachelor, right? Or, um, you know, at what value would this business have to get where you think we would, you know, you would be comfortable? Whereas somebody else like wants to shoot for the moon and make it a billion-dollar business, the other co-founder you know, may be perfectly comfortable just bringing in decent salary every year and working 30 hours a week, right? I've seen so many co-founder relationships break down like that. And, you know, and we're just like, you know, those conversations could have been had earlier, right? So you want to get on the same page. And if you download this, this, uh, or if you go to this, uh, bit.ly, uh, /34-questions, I think you'll get a good guide how to do that. The second thing when you're starting to formalize this relationship is the equity split. All right. Once again, we have a pretty good worksheet here. bit.ly/equity-split is a spreadsheet that was created by a Founder Institute alumni. And I think it's a super useful spreadsheet because it starts to break things down in a very concrete way. All right. You're not 50/50. With your co-founder, okay? And it is a huge red flag to angel investors that I know, um, and to myself when I see a 50/50 split between co-founders. Or, you know, and that's assuming two, so if it's three, it's 33%, whatever. Um, because that tells me that the hard discussions have not been had, okay? Everybody brings something different to the table. All right, I could tell you right now I own a significantly smaller portion of my company than my co-founder. And the reason why is because my co-founder put up some of the money up front and brought a lot of contacts to the table that I did not. Okay, so those are the types of conversations that you have to have. I know that they're challenging, all right, but pushing them on and kicking them down the road and just saying, okay, we're just gonna keep it even right now is only like— it's yes, having those conversations right now may, may actually break up your team, but believe me, uh, that will— that's a good thing, all right? Because, uh, then that's preventing you from having those conversations maybe break up your team down the line when there's a lot of money at stake versus right now when you're just at the ground level, all right? So have those tough conversations and look at the spreadsheet. It will help you kind of make those decisions because the spreadsheet literally breaks it down and tries to, you know, quantify, okay, this person's bringing this to the table, this person's bringing this to the table. So check that out. And then the last thing that I'll go over quickly here, and I'm going to quote myself, is that the lack of a co-founder is a terrible excuse to not get started, right? And I suspect and I see here too, Alberto, you know, we're all looking for technical co-founder, asking for a friend, blah blah blah. All right, so for Alberto and for everyone, please take this to heart, okay? And I don't mean to be narcissistic here and quote myself, but a lack of a co-founder is a terrible, terrible excuse. To not get started, all right? Because the way that you're— if you don't have a co-founder right now, you know how you're going to find one? It's not going to be by not getting started and just looking for one and using that as excuse, a gating factor before you actually get started. The way you're going to find one is to actually get started and actually start interacting with people in your space, right, that you're trying to build a business in. Actually start talking to different, uh, organizations in that space, actually going out and seeing all the different tools and the different competitors that you're going to have in that space, actually going out and trying to create partnerships with other organizations in that space, right? Even if you're just doing it for a frickin blog or something, okay? Or just an event series or a meetup group that you put up. All right. Just getting out there and doing that stuff is where you will typically find those co-founders. And this is why a lot of people that kind of hit that wall, okay, okay, yeah, I want to build this, but I don't have the skill to build it, right? So I mean, what's even the sense of getting started? That is essentially failing. That's admitting failure and not trying to get over that hump, okay? Because by getting over that hump and building it, that's when you'll actually interact with these people, right? That's when you'll actually start to become, quote unquote, part of the industry if you're an outsider right now. And There are so many ways now to just get started, all right? Especially these are all examples if you're creating a software product, and I know this will probably be a question that comes up, and anyone who's registered for this event will get a video recording and you'll get a copy of this presentation, okay? But there is an entire industry that has grown up around what's called the no-code movement, okay? No-code.tech, which is here in the bottom right corner, is a great resource. But basically what this allows you to do is you can build an app on a site called Bubble right now, no code. Okay, now is that app going to be the final app that you release? No. But again, the point is that you just have to get started. And we have had people come through the Founder Institute with no coding experience that have built waiting lists of tens of thousands of people or started to generate actual revenues, right? And you know what that allowed them to do? That allowed them to then go out and recruit a technical co-founder or actually then raise angel funding, right? Because they could have a case in saying, look at what I've been able to do by just cobbling stuff together. Imagine I actually had a technical co-founder and some real technology behind this project, right? That's a powerful message. So just get started, all right? I don't care what kind of business you're building. There are a million things that you can do before really putting together this whole founding team. Just get started. And we're all here today, which I think, or tonight, wherever you are, because this is an opportunity to get started. Okay? You don't want to observe in your space. You want to participate. So whether that's a LinkedIn group or a meetup group, start blogging about what you're doing. There's a ton of different Slack groups now going on, Facebook groups. You name it. All right. Start going out there and building an audience around what you are trying to do as a business. Don't be afraid. Another thing that will have you fail before you even start is if you're actually afraid to share your ideas and what you're trying to build. Okay. Once again, that will ensure that you don't find anyone to join your team and that you don't get started. All right. So don't observe, participate. So We are here to participate, right? So let's segue into this. So some housecleaning items. Number one, we put this in all the emails you receive. We tried to put it in as many places as we possibly can. Some people still just don't see it, so I'm going to reiterate again. In order to participate in the networking portions of this event, you need to be on a desktop or a tablet. It's not going to work on a mobile device. And you need to be using Chrome or Firefox. Chrome is definitely preferred. All right, that's a limitation of the platform. Just if you can right now, if you're not on one of those platforms, I recommend you immediately close this out and rejoin using one of those platforms. Number 2, you— in the networking, and as you can see here, there are the tables, right? So you can join the random a one-on-one networking, which will randomly match you. And if somebody's creeping you out or whatever, you can quickly click X and it'll randomly match you with the next person. Or you can join one of these tables, and all the tables are based on different types of businesses. So there's general, you know, deep tech, finance, whatever. Okay, and what we're aiming for you to do, number one, okay, again, if you haven't downloaded the worksheet, download all right? And you'll see on the worksheet that it basically does two main things. Number one, briefly describe your idea or business, all right? People think, oh yeah, I'll be brief, I'll be brief. Like, no, you won't. You should be able to describe it in one sentence, as we put it here, right? My company, or my idea if you don't have a company, right, is developing a defined offering, okay? So a defined offering, don't Buzzwords are terrible when you're trying to describe your business really, really succinctly to people. Any buzzwords or any terminology that the common person wouldn't understand, remove it from your vocabulary. Okay? Because basically a defined offering is literally a website, right? But you know what a lot of people will call a website? An AI-powered, you know, machine learning, platform that utilizes blockchain and whatever, right? And really you're just like, okay, is this a website? Like, yeah, it's a website. Okay, just to say a website, okay? At least for the purposes of this. But so my company's developing a website or a mobile app to help a defined audience, right? Be specific. Don't just say I'm trying to help women, you know, or I'm trying to help small businesses, right? Those are massive audiences. Be specific. You're trying to help them solve a problem. All right. At the core, every business solves a problem for a consumer. So be very clear on what problem you're solving for that audience. And then the secret sauce is there, you know, for anyone, MBAs in the audience or anyone who's done a lot of reading on business. It's just, you know, it's unique selling proposition, unique value proposition, something like that. Okay. But again, If you can't explain it in this one sentence, then you're probably going too long. All right. And then the second part of it is why are you building this company and what are you looking for in a co-founder? All right. That's it. Nobody likes a time hog. So we can't possibly— everyone here from the Founder Institute team, we can't possibly be in all the different tables. So we do have to rely on the audience a little bit to self-police. All right. Let's aim for a 3-minute max. For any one person to kind of be on the screen kind of doing their thing. All right. And everybody should be forthcoming and say, okay, hey, it's starting to go a little long. Do you want to wrap it up kind of thing? Right. Doesn't mean we have to be mean to each other, but it's just like, look, we're all here to possibly meet some people. If somebody's going way too long, number one, they're probably going way too long and not helping themselves. Right. Because it's much easier to talk about the business that you're building in 100 sentences than to do it in one sentence. Okay. And number two, like, we just want to preserve the time for everybody. So let's all try to self-police. Again, nobody likes a blabbermouth. All right. It's not going to help you. You're just going to come off as unfocused, self-promotional, and try to keep it to around 3 minutes. And I actually highly recommend that people in the rooms actually just bring up the, you know, just whatever or stock timer that you have on your smartphone and just get that going just to keep you in check 'cause you'll be surprised at how fast 3 minutes goes. All right, well, with that being said, I'm now going to leave the screen and you're going to transport right back into that networking room. The good news is, is that some of these events, like the room, people have stayed networking for hours and hours and hours, and I'm talking like 6 to 8 hours later, which is kind of crazy. But anyway, the room will not close until the last people leave. OK, so, so there's no rush on it. All right, jump around to different rooms if you would like, and I really do hope that you, that you meet some interesting people. And, and once again, we will follow up with an email in the next couple of days. We'll just need to process the video and everything, so you'll get a copy of all these resources. But, but happy hunting out there for team members, and I hope you find this event fruital. All right, thanks everyone.