Practical Tips for Finding a Co-Founder and Growing Your Startup Fast

Welcome to our co-founder networking event. My name is Daniel. I'm a part of the Founder Institute marketing team. And if this is the first time you've been to a Founder Institute event, Founder Institute is the best place in the world to turn your startup idea into an actual startup and your startup into a fundable business. So before we really let you network and go meet a co-founder, we do want to run a tiny presentation for you so that you have a good idea on how exactly you should go about looking for a co-founder. So I hope you all can see my screen. So yeah, let's get started. So just the agenda here for today, it's only 10 minutes hopefully, some quick tips on how to look for a co-founder, then how to formalize a co-founder relationship and how to exactly find a co-founder in terms of where do you look, how do you look, all of that good stuff. Then we have our networking, which is the main point of this event. Do make sure that once all of this is done, you stick around for the networking. To help you out, we prepared a worksheet that you can use to actually introduce yourself and get to know other people and share your ideas. We have Fahima from the team here. She'll be sharing the link to the worksheet in the chat, so do look out for that. So the traditional way to think about a co-founder is the classic hacker, hustler, hipster. And the thing is this used to work, but the truth is this doesn't apply anymore. So, and the reason for this is because startups aren't traditional businesses, right? Startups are meant to be quick. Startups have a lot that needs to be done with very few resources. So how you think about a co-founder really does change when you, when you start to think of your startup and start actually building out. So here are a few tips and we'll start with this. Do not only look for skill sets because the truth is when you go and look for a co-founder, this is a person you hope would be on a very long-term journey with you. So skill sets alone don't really, get the job done, right? So you need to look for compatibility. You need to look for investment from the other person, not just investment in terms of their time, but also emotional investment. These are all really, really important things that you need to keep in mind. And the type of person you should really look for, and we say this quite often here at FI, is the figure shit out type of person. And the reason for this is you need someone who is willing to not be pessimistic when things come, you know, when things get hard and try to figure things out, right? Again, like we kind of, you know, we get back to the skill sets point of view. Some people, they might lack the skill sets, but the question will always be like, can they overcome that barrier of, oh, I don't have the skills to do this and just, so to say, like figure shit out. And then of course you also need to look at how you work together. This is really, really important because when you work with someone really long-term, you have to think about whether or not they complement you and whether or not you complement them. So like a marriage, this is a long-term partnership and you really, really have to make sure that you're aligned on a bunch of different things. And thankfully at FI, we have a bunch of resources to help you do that. So again, make sure you watch out the chat. We have Fahima from the team. She'll be sharing a bunch of resources for you. So talking about formalizing a co-founder relationship, a bunch of things to keep in mind before you decide to actually become co-founders. First of all, friendship does not equal business partners. We hear this all the time, you know, don't do business with friends and family, and there is a reason for it, because these are really close relationships, and as co-founders, you'll often disagree, you know, you'll have to work a lot harder than you would in a lot of different settings, and that kind of takes its toll on you. So when you're looking for a business partner, you have to venture out of just your own friend circle or the people that you know. So one of the things that we do recommend is a test drive. And this test drive could be in a form of a small project. And this could be something that you're maybe working on together, or this could be a project that you're doing for somebody else. So we do always recommend that before, you know, you actually decide to be co-founders, do a project together, figure out whether or not you have the temperament to handle the other person, and whether or not they have the temperament to handle you. So ensuring compatibility. So a bunch of things, and you can really have a better understanding of it if you check out our resources where you have 34 questions that you and your co-founder should answer to really have a good idea of whether or not you're compatible. So just going into a couple of things here that are really important. Compare your personal motivations and priorities. As somebody who has come up with the startup idea, it's really, really hard to meet someone who has kind of like the same passion and fire for what you're trying to do. So it's really important to make sure that whoever it is that you're bringing on board as a co-founder has a bigger investment because oftentimes the finances within startups are really, really tough and it's, difficult to keep people around. So you need someone who'll stick around through the lows when it comes to startups so that you can, you know, together see the highs when they do come. And also discuss your financial and life situation. That's really important. Again, people have different priorities in life. For some people, a startup is not the type of business that they should you know, be in. Maybe they're more suited to a lifestyle business. Maybe they, you know, they're better off working a 9 to 5, right? And it's like everybody has their own goals for themselves and their families. So it's important to be on the same page on this. And also, of course, you want to finalize your roles and responsibilities. As a founder, you, have the benefit of bringing on people who you can kind of collectively divide, you know, the responsibility of building things out. Some of it comes with like what skill set does the other person have, and some of it comes with whether or not they're enthusiastic about taking that on. So again, to kind of best understand this, I really recommend going through these 34 questions for yourself and whoever you want to bring on board as a co-founder. So yeah, one of the things that we often hear is the equity split. And I know what you're thinking, if you're like two co-founders, the most logical way to split equity is 50/50. But the truth is, that's actually the wrong answer. And the reason that's the wrong answer is because if you think about a startup, logically, there's always more of an investment from one person than the other. And it's often the person who's come up with the idea and has started doing all of the initial work on it who has a bigger investment, a bigger stake. So logically, what you would want to do is maybe the split, if you're two co-founders, that's maybe 60-40, right? Maybe that's 70-30. So you have to kind of figure that out. And thankfully, we have a resource to help you do that. Check out our equity split resource and they should be able to guide you on what's the best way to split equity. And this is something that our co-founder and CEO Jonathan says, and that is a lack of a co-founder is a terrible excuse not to get started. Because the truth is the best way to actually co— to find a co-founder is to get started. So oftentimes you'll see that the best people when it comes to helping you build your business come to you when you're actually in active building mode. So if you're waiting around for a co-founder to come to you, if you're, you know, if you're still spending a lot of time, you know, not building and on other things, one of which would be finding a co-founder, you're actually wasting time. The best thing to do is kick things off and start building. And thankfully in 2025, we have some really, really great resources to help you build your startup. This list is kind of old, but there, but you'll see, you know, a pretty decent layout of tools that you can use to build an MVP. And an MVP is essentially the most simplest form of your product that you can use to actually prove that your idea actually has legs and can work. So you'll see a couple of things here. There's Replit, there's Bolt, there's Lovable, there's Webflow, Squarespace. And again, this entirely depends on your use case. What is it that you're trying to build out? But in this day and age, thanks to AI, you have unlimited options. So my recommendation is definitely, definitely get started. And then How do you actually find a co-founder, right? The best way to do it is hit up events, get within the startup community and talk to people. You're over here at our co-founder event and you're actually on the right step. You're, you're on the right path. So the next step would be to use this event as a platform to meet other people, use other platforms as avenues to meet other people. and your options are thankfully unlimited in this day and age. You have a bunch of people on LinkedIn, you have Slack, you have Eventbrite, you have Facebook groups, meetups, Medium, Co-Founders Lab, so many things. So part 2, I know I took up way more time than I was planning to, but thankfully we are getting to the networking. So the platform that you have here is called Airmeet. And what we do here is we let you join a table where you can meet other people and talk to them about your startup. And we'll give you some tips on how to do that as well. So in case you are on your desk, in case you're on your phone, I recommend to get on your desktop or tablet so that you have a better user experience. And make sure that when you do join a table on Airmeet, you kind of rotate so that you can keep meeting people. Okay, so here are a couple of tips when it comes to co-founder networking. So first of all, download the worksheet. We have Faima in the chat who's actually shared it out for you, so you should be able to use that worksheet as a guide to introduce yourself and meet, uh, a co-founder, hopefully. And so to the next step, what you want to do is you want to talk about yourself and your business idea. So use this template to introduce yourself and your business idea. And what's really important is at events like this, you want to talk about the insights that you have that got you started on this idea and your background as well, because ideally you're looking at the background of a potential co-founder, right? right? And lastly, when you're networking, when you're speaking to people, don't be a time hog. Stick to 3 minutes. Make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak. Be nice, be polite, and finally, have fun. Again, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you have a great time networking, and honestly, I hope you can find a co-founder at this event. We'll see you in the next one.