Founder Profiles

How well do you know your co-founder(s)?

If your big idea proves correct, having a solid founding team will play a significant role in your venture's success. However, assembling the right team might be your greatest challenge. According to a recent university study, 10% of founding teams end up breaking up within one year and 45% within four years. I can personally attest this is entirely true.

I once read that a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) should possess a combination of technical, organizational, and communication skills. This, actually, applies to all founders, regardless of their role. You should seek these skills in anyone who will manage all critical areas of your venture. You want them to set an example for their teams to follow.

Having technical, functional, or industry knowledge is not enough. It is crucial that one can communicate ideas clearly. Effective verbal and written communication within and across departments ensures that all teams understand what matters, what is expected of them, and how they should work together. These skills also help create a cohesive and transparent organization from day one.

Finally, don't compromise on finding someone who is hands-on and obsessively organized. Easier said than done. As we progress in our corporate careers, our work tends to center around emails, slides, and calls. However, this does not prepare us to run the show on our own and handle a multitude of different tasks every day. From fundraising and selling to conducting interviews, keeping the books updated… and ensuring there is enough toilet paper.

Did I pay attention to all of this? Not really. I wanted to get things going as fast as possible. I wanted to build a founding team quickly (too quickly), thinking it would make our startup more solid and credible to investors. However, during the first year, it caused more hassles than anything, with a founder breakup occurring almost immediately.

While building the prototype for our Air Travel Marketplace project, I quickly realized that the remaining co-founder, who had been running his own branding and design agency for five years, lacked sufficient hands-on experience with real, tech-driven products. Although he was motivated to transition to a product role, bringing him and a CPO as co-founder proved to be the wrong decision (I'll elaborate on this in another chapter). We wasted too much time, energy, and money on misguided efforts, ultimately leading us down a dead-end path.

In 2018, I found my final co-founder who initially seemed the perfect match. He was—and still is—a true technical wizard who designed and built our Airline DirectConnect Platform, enabling us to find a new direction in 2021. However, as the team grew, challenges emerged, partly due to fundamental differences in our mindsets and modus operandi. This put our partnership to the test and created tensions within the company numerous times. Despite our differences, we managed to set them aside and work together to save the company, ultimately benefiting both our team and investors.

Takeaway #5

If your venture requires a founding team, seek out individuals who possess a unique combination of domain expertise, communication skills, and organizational abilities. Be demanding in your search. If one of these skills is missing, it is better to pass and look for another individual with a more suitable profile.