Questions to Ask Potential Cofounders: The Master List

I think these questions are awesome. As someone who lost one co-founder early on (there were three of us and one person quit right after YC), I wish we'd talked about some of this stuff more.<p>Having said that, I actually think in reality this conversation is very difficult to have.<p>If you've never started a start-up before you just don't know what to expect so some of these questions don't make sense. I would have WANTED to answer these honestly, but when I started HireArt I really had no clue whether I'd want to raise outside money (let's just get started was my motto) or which attributes we'd en up clashing on.<p>I think this makes more sense if you've started a company before and can anticipate the feelings and issues that will arise (but in that case you probably already know which questions to ask and don't need a guide).<p>Overall I guess I think it's really important to talk and to talk a lot. However, don't estimate how much there is that you just don't know about yourself until you're doing the start-up.

Nice Compilation. A few more views on this topic:<p>- From Elad Gil: <a href="http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/02/how-to-choose-co-founder.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/02/how-to-choose-co-founder.htm...</a><p>- From Venture Hacks: <a href="http://venturehacks.com/articles/co-founder-interview" rel="nofollow">http://venturehacks.com/articles/co-founder-interview</a>

This is such an important topic, you'd hope a thread with discussion and suggestions would get pegged to the top of the site. If this was a PHPBB, you'd want this to be one of the "sticky" threads.<p>Key questions (some overlap) from my experience:<p>* Are we the founders allowed to work with or advise any other startups or projects before XXX milestone in the company?<p>* What is the decision mechanism we will use to resolve intractable disputes, and why do we believe it will work?<p>* What is the mechanism by which a founder will be released from the team, and how will we engage it?<p>* How are we vesting?<p>* Can we make a list of every acquaintance we could ever possibly foresee hiring? How will we <i>voir dire</i> those people, so we aren't fighting over whose friends we're willing to hire?<p>* How many months of salary per employee will we need to add a headcount?<p>* At what point will we pull the trigger and start pitching our offering to customers? Are we waiting for a rev1 or beta release? Can we start selling now?<p>* Who apart from the dev lead will decide when it's time to "ship" or "sell"?<p>* How will we decide to "pivot" or give up on our original offering?<p>* If our idea fails, are we continuing as this team, or reevaluating? If we're not sure, how will we decide? How do we know we're giving each other honest answers?<p>* As we willing to add part-timers, juniors, or indefinite interns, and if so, how will we account for them?<p>* What level of agreement among the founders is required to fire an employee?<p>* Under what circumstances would we consider adding an employee to our "management team" or "cofounder pool"?<p>* Once we have a management team, will we continue managing it and the rest of the company as a group of cofounders, or will that conversation be vested in the management team?<p>* What resources will we spend on promotion and appearance marketing? Do we require a high-end website? Do we require a professional logo? Do we require business cards? Will we be attending conferences?<p>For me, I'd want a theme of my cofounder questions to be, "how do I know we're being honest with each other and really engaging the question"? Most important cofounder questions are easy to B.S., and B.S. answers buy you nothing; they may actually make things worse, either by needlessly committing people to positions or providing ways to hang people in arguments later. "Why do we think this answer is right?" "When would we reconsider it?" "How sure are we about this?"<p>I could make a list of answers I thought I was sure of last time I started a company (this one) that it turned out I was dead wrong about.

"Is your mind clouded by any kind of expensive leadership or self-help course, at the end of which you get to 'walk on fire' to test your renewed self-esteem?"<p>Yes -&#62; run.<p>"Do you believe in any form of magical thought? Do you believe that Steve Jobs Himself watches over you from a cloud, without judgement, gently supporting each and every decision you make?"<p>Yes -&#62; run faster, screaming.<p>True Story Bro.

The section on "Personal Priorities and Risks" is very important. Deciding when to go full time and how much each cofounder is willing to put on the line is something everyone needs to think about going into a partnership.

Really helpful to have this concise document...what a great list of things to consider about a partnership. So many of these are easily overlooked.

this is super helpful - so glad to have this as a resource + to see this being talked about.

website is not accessible for me, anyone cares to paste the questions here?