If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

If you’re chasing the startup dragon, one of the most important decisions you’ll make will be choosing the right co-founder(s).

Every potential co-founder relationship is different, but after going through this process half a dozen times, I’ve learned some extremely valuable lessons that I wish I would’ve known years ago.

The most important lesson is that it’s really useful to view this as a “dating process” which can be broken down into four distinct phases:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Collaboration
4. Partnership

Awareness

This is what I'm doing right now 🙂 If you're reading this, then you're aware that I'm actively looking for co-founders as well as getting a feel for who I am as an author and as a person. Feel free to reach out & say hi 👋

I believe this phase is critical and is often overlooked by aspiring founders. I'm hesitant to view this process as a marketing funnel, since it introduces some odd power dynamics into the mix whereas the best co-founder relationships tend to form naturally — but to some extent it is a marketing funnel. What you're marketing is yourself and your vision for the type of company you want to build, and what you're selling is the opportunity to build that company together.

It's so critical for founders to "start with why" at this stage and clarify their own vision, expectations, and goals early on. I'd encourage founders to write this down (ideally in public) since this will help you articulate your answers to these foundational questions as clearly and succinctly as possible. If you write publicly about your vision, you'll be able to scale yourself so much better than you could ever hope to do on your own.

As you speak with potential co-founders, customers, advisors, investors, and future employees, you'll find it invaluable to have taken the time up front to articulate your views on these keys questions (more on this below).

So what can you do to increase awareness and attract awesome potential co-founders? Here are a few ideas that've worked well for me:

• Reach out to your existing network; LinkedIn, former colleagues, existing advisors, etc. Let them know what you're looking to build and the type of people you're looking to work with.
• Join related communities — the more niche the better — and engage with people. Niche communities are self-selecting in that they do a lot of the hard work for you by attracting people who're already proactively interested in your space. Try to spark conversations with these folks, share what you find genuinely interesting, and see where those conversations lead.
• Explore accelerator, incubator, and startup programs that are focused on helping early stage founders. Some examples include On Deck, Write of Passage, and other niche cohort-based courses.
  • Popular accelerators like YC and Techstars used to be good resources for finding co-founders and refining ideas, but these days they're a better fit for teams that are further along in their startup journeys.