How To Choose Your Partners
One question I get a lot is what documents should I prepare before starting up. Since I already answered this one I should now try to answer the second most popular question I get: “How to choose your partners”.
The ideal partner would be someone you know every inch of his soul. Because it’s very rare to find someone you know so well and is interested to work with you on the same stuff, you should take some actions before starting to work together with a new partner.
1.Skills
The overall set of skills a founding start-up team should have are: marketing, development, product creativity, management, operation, raising money, sales and social skills. Find someone who has the skills you don’t. If you need 2 partners to cover the whole set of skills - go ahead.
2. Start Small
It’s recommended to start working on something small together. A quick website, blog or a twitter/facebook application. Anything that doesn’t take more than a month to launch. Even if you’re friends for more than 7 years you’ll discover so many new things about the person once you start working together. If it’s a big project, just go ahead and make a quick prototype with your potential partner.
Remember, the goal is to get to know the person as much as you can before starting doing business together.
3. Preform Deadline Test
In the army they preform some kind of a week long training camp for whom wants to serve in elite units. It’s usually the hardest thing a 18 year old ever did in his life. It brings his real character out. For us in the high-tech industry the equivalent is deadlines.
Do something quick with your potential partner. Set a deadline for 2 weeks. If he doesn’t start sweating his ass off few days before the deadline in order to finish up- don’t work with him. These things never change. It’s his character. If he delivers his part before your deadline- this is your guy. Marry him.
4. Investigation
Put on your investigator hat and go check on your potential partner. Don’t get blinded by his CV lines or recommendation from 3 friends of his.
Here is a check list for things you need to find out: what his parents do, where do they live, in what city he grew, how many girlfriends he had, what did he study in high school, what did he do after high school until now, what his co-workers say about him, what his bosses say, how much money he has and more.
It’s recommended to find out how he behaved when times were tough.
Once you have it all start questioning everything with a why. Then put it all together and see if you still want to work with him.
5. Founders Agreement
don’t hurry with the founders agreement. You need to know the person before making this agreement. You need to know the sweet spots that could cause problems ahead in order to protect yourself in this agreement. If it’s possible, work with the guy for few months before you sign an agreement. If not, do the quick 2-4 weeks project and only then sit together to write the document.
It’s better to have this document signed before you launch your project.
Add your tips in the comments.
