When to fire your co-founders

The first words he uses to illustrate cofounders you shouldn't bring in are "grey hair". If I could recruit anyone in the world as a cofounder, a lot of the top contenders would have gray hair.

The biggest mismatches that I can think of involve co-founders with completely different expectations of what the company will do, different financial backgrounds and different energy levels.<p>As soon as you're 'not in this boat together' you're in trouble.<p>Other than that I certainly wouldn't let age be a problem either way or rule out people with a serious commitment to family or other dependents.<p>As for firing co-founders, that is not as easy as he makes it seem, I think that if you get to the point where you need to 'fire a co-founder' and they don't leave by themselves that you are probably better off starting over.<p>Ideas aplenty.

I was telling a guy I sometimes do contract work for about one of my projects and he asked if I was interested in bringing him on as a cofounder (which I need) to take care of the UI/UX stuff and balance out my development load (which I also desperately need). I told him I'd think about it, but I'm honestly very hesitant to take on a cofounder at this point. My main hesitation with him is that he lives in another country and I worry about all of the complications involved with that (although I heard it worked out well for 37Signals). Another issue I have is that my project is still kind of my baby, and I hate to hand even a part of it over to anyone else just yet. I guess I need to do more networking before I make any decisions. It's lonely working alone, but it's scary trusting other people. Perhaps that means I haven't met anyone that I trust enough to work with as a cofounder.

To me, the core of this article is always make sure you have the right team for what you're trying to achieve.<p>Allowing 'hanger-on' people who have installed themselves into positions within the company, displays a clear lack of leadership and the ability to make and carry out difficult decisions.<p>If you don't know the kind of people you need in your team, recognise this as a weakness, and seek help. Then be prepared to follow the advice you get.

I like the read but..... I would have liked the author to be more specific about the qualities as a cofounder. A well rounded person compared to a so-so person is still too vague for me. And as a VC and the reason to not invest in my start-up was due to co-founders I would like him to say so, not make a vague excuse as he said he did per the article.