The Startup Psychologist — Cofounder Clarity

About Cofounder Clarity

Dr. Matthew Jones is the originator of cofounder coaching as a named professional discipline. When he founded Cofounder Clarity in October 2020, no practice existed whose sole focus was the working relationship between startup cofounders—not individual founder performance, not general startup leadership, but the partnership itself. He created the category.

He is a Licensed Psychologist with a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, and the author of The Cofounder Effect (2025)—the first book-length treatment of cofounder conflict as a distinct psychological and relational domain. Over five years and 100+ founders, he has worked with founding teams backed by Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures, Tiger Global, Techstars, Village Global, and more.

His written work has appeared in TIME, Inc. Magazine, Business Insider, Psychology Today, The Observer, The Huffington Post, Thought Catalog, and more, and has accumulated millions of views online. He writes the Scaling Connection column for Psychology Today and has been featured on SiriusXM, the Practical Founders Podcast, and numerous founder-focused programs.

What Is Cofounder Coaching?

Cofounder coaching is a professional discipline focused on the working relationship between startup cofounders. It addresses the communication patterns, decision-making dynamics, role clarity issues, and interpersonal tensions that emerge when two or more people share the responsibility of building a company together.

It is not executive coaching. Executive coaching develops individual leaders. Cofounder coaching develops the founding partnership—the relationship between leaders. A founding team can have two individually high-performing people and a structurally dysfunctional working relationship. Individual executive coaching cannot address that. Cofounder coaching does.

It is not therapy. Therapy focuses on an individual’s mental health diagnosis and history. Cofounder coaching focuses on the shared dynamics, communication structures, and relational patterns between cofounders in a business context.

It is not mediation. Mediation resolves discrete, isolated disputes. Cofounder coaching works on the underlying relational architecture that generates conflict—before, during, and after specific disagreements.

The Problem No One Is Measuring

The most cited statistic in the startup world is a ghost. For over 35 years, the claim that "65% of high-potential startups fail due to cofounder conflict" (attributed to Noam Wasserman in his groundbreaking text The Founder’s Dilemmas) has been the foundational "fact" of the industry. It is a misattribution. And once you read where it came from, you will be appalled.

This figure originates from a 1989 study by Gorman & Sahlman. That study did not measure cofounder conflict. It did not interview a single founder. Instead, it surveyed 49 Venture Capitalists, asking them to check boxes on why their portfolio companies failed. The specific box they checked was "Ineffective Senior Management."

We have been building an entire field on a proxy. The 65% figure reflects a VC’s retrospective view of management performance, not the internal relational health of the founding team. As of 2026, the actual rate of failure specifically tied to cofounder conflict has never been formally measured by the industry. The real number is almost certainly higher, but it has remained invisible to empirical science.

The Data Gap

While the industry relied on adjacent research, the crisis of the founder remained unaddressed:

Founder Vulnerability: 72% of entrepreneurs experience mental health conditions, compared to 32% of the general population (Freeman, UCSF).
The Multi-Founder Norm: 83% of VC-backed startups are built by two or more cofounders (Founder Ownership Report, 2025; 45,000+ startups).
Lack of Tooling: Prior to the development of the Cofounder Satisfaction Index (CSI), no validated instrument existed to measure the health of the founding relationship.

Until now, "cofounder conflict" has been treated as a footnote to organizational psychology or marital dynamics. No peer-reviewed empirical literature existed that treated it as a distinct clinical and professional phenomenon.

By applying unadapted frameworks to the unique, high-pressure context of cofounders, the industry hasn't just been guessing—it has been operating in the dark. We are finally moving from anecdotal "check-box" surveys to a clinical standard of measurement.

The Research Foundation

The frameworks Dr. Jones applies in cofounder coaching are the disciplined translation of robust, empirically validated research traditions into the specific context of founding partnerships. This is what was missing from the field: someone who understood both the research and the startup context well enough to bridge them.

Gottman Method (John & Julie Gottman). The most empirically validated body of relational research available, including the Four Horsemen of relationship breakdown (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling) and the longitudinal research predicting which relationships succeed and which dissolve. Dr. Jones is trained and certified in Gottman Methodology and applies these findings directly to cofounder partnerships, where the same predictors of marital dissolution also predict founding team breakdowns.
Emotion-Focused Therapy (Sue Johnson). An attachment-based model with strong empirical support for improving relational bonds under distress. EFT identifies how negative interaction cycles—particularly the Pursue-Withdraw pattern—emerge from unmet attachment needs. Dr. Jones applies this framework to the cycles that drive cofounder conflict, particularly where one founder pushes for direct confrontation while the other withdraws.
Imago Relationship Therapy (Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt). A structured dialogue framework that surfaces how formative relational experiences shape adult partnership patterns. The Imago Dialogue creates structured communication space that cofounders cannot generate under conflict conditions on their own.
Tavistock and Object Relations (Klein, Bion, and the British psychoanalytic tradition). Frameworks for understanding unconscious dynamics in groups and organizations, such as projective identification, splitting, container/contained dynamics. These explain why cofounder conflict is so resistant to operational fixes: many of the most damaging cofounder dynamics operate beneath the level of conscious awareness.

Original Frameworks

Dr. Jones has developed the first suite of frameworks designed specifically for diagnosing and resolving cofounder conflict. Each is documented in The Cofounder Effect (2025).

The Cofounder Effect. The powerful and multifaceted influence of cofounding relationships on founder mental health, startup culture, and company trajectory. The central thesis of Dr. Jones’s practice and research.
The First Formal Definition of Cofounder Conflict. “A relational misalignment between two or more founders, resulting in conscious and unconscious distress for one or more team members.” The first formal psychological definition in the academic and practitioner literature.
The Three Languages Model. Cofounders operate in three distinct communication registers: Operational, Psychological, and Archetypal. Mismatched languages generate conflict even when both founders are acting in good faith.
The Cofounder Conflict Matrix. A four-quadrant diagnostic mapping the direct and indirect, professional and personal manifestations of cofounder conflict, plus the Cultural Circle capturing organizational spillover.
The Cofounder Conflict Navigation System™. The proprietary coaching methodology applied in all Cofounder Clarity engagements.
The Cofounder Satisfaction Index (CSI). The first proprietary pre/post measure of cofounder relationship health. Most teams report statistically significant improvement at close of engagement.

Credentials

PsyD, Clinical Psychology — The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
MA, Clinical Psychology — The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
MA, Counseling Psychology — The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
Licensed Psychologist — State of Colorado (active)
Gottman Method Training — The Gottman Institute

Cofounder Dynamics Institute

Dr. Jones is co-founder of the Cofounder Dynamics Institute (CDI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in formation, alongside Annie Garofalo of Confidante. CDI exists to build the empirical research foundation the field has never had: a validated diagnostic instrument, peer-reviewed studies, and published professional standards for practitioners who work with founding teams. The field has operated for decades on a single misattributed 1989 statistic. CDI will replace it with primary research.

Learn more: cofounderdiagnostic.com