5 Common Myths of Cofounder Therapy Debunked

Read this to better understand cofounder therapy and how it is different than couple’s therapy.

As cofounder therapy continues to grow as a category, several emerging misconceptions among providers and potential clients leads to confusion about these services. If these common myths are left unchecked they will prevent founders from accessing support and deteriorate the quality of care they receive. 

To add clarity and improve the quality of cofounder therapy, this article addresses the five most common myths I hear about cofounder therapy from clients and therapists looking to enter the space. 

Here are the top 5 myths about cofounder therapy:

1. Cofounder therapy is the same as couple’s therapy.

This is absolutely not true. 

Cofounder therapy is similar to couple’s therapy in that it requires the coach to possess a thorough understanding of couple’s therapy treatment modalities—emotion-focused couple’s therapy, the Gottman method, Esther Perel, to name a few—and therapeutic skills to facilitate interventions. It also shares overlap in the skills of systemic thinking, case conceptualization, and identifying the emotional dynamics occurring between two or more people. 

Session structure (e.g., 45–90 minute sessions in which the primary activity involves talking to one another with a mediator providing process observations and recommendations to change patterns of interacting) may also feel similar to clients. However, these necessary structural and competency requirements do not make cofounder therapy identical to couple’s therapy.

There are several key differences:

• Business owners have an added layer of complexity not present in most couple’s partnerships

• Cofounder therapy emphasizes the need to maintain a functional business relationship while uncovering uncomfortable emotions

• Issues of emotional and sexual intimacy among cofounders are less prevalent than in couple’s therapy

• Cofounder therapy includes concrete business-oriented discussions not experienced in traditional couple’s counseling

• Where couple’s therapy may be perceived as a necessity, cofounder coaching—for some companies—may be considered a luxury service

These nuanced differences constellate distinct tones in the sessions themselves and bring forth different parts of self for clients. 

Of course, these distinctions get more complicated when cofounders are also married or best friends prior to starting a business relationship. But overall, I encourage you to picture the difference between cofounder therapy and couple’s therapy as a Venn diagram:

A (cofounder therapy) and B (couple’s therapy) possess meaningful overlap for treatment providers and clients, however, they are separate components.

2. Any coach or therapist can provide cofounder therapy.

This is one of the more problematic issues of the cofounder therapy category expansion. 

The biggest problem is that any therapist who works with couples thinks they can work with cofounders and any coach who works with executives think they can work with cofounders. Both of these are false narratives and show blatant disrespect of domain expertise. 

You need to have more than knowledge of the space — you need therapeutic skills and training; You need more than therapeutic skills and training — you need knowledge of the space, which leads me to:

Working with cofounders is an area of specialization. 

While you don’t need to know all of the ins and outs of business operations, practitioners need familiarity with the multifaceted contexts and pressures founders and entrepreneurs face. To be effective, you also need a solid foundation of skills grounded in couple’s therapy theories and treatment modalities. This combination takes years of work, study, and application for providers.

Much in the same way that working with the LGBTQ community does not require that you are LGBTQ-identified but benefits from you possessing knowledge and expertise in understanding issues common to LGBTQ-identified individuals, a good cofounder coach does not need to be a former founder, but must understand the specific socio-cultural contexts in which clients are embedded. Ideally, they also have familiarity with terminology, macro-trends, sub-communities, and identity development milestones founders experience at various stages of growth. To be well-rounded, providers must also possess the skills to facilitate meaningful, insightful conversations leading to greater clarity and more effective business decisions.

Whether the practitioner’s background includes being a former founder, therapist, or coach, these foundational skills—in and of themselves—are not sufficient to claim expertise in the domain of cofounder coaching.

Let’s not pretend any gym-rat can take center stage at the Olympia—there are levels to this game. 

3. Cofounder therapy is only touchy feely soft-skills.

While I would agree that much of the work that I do with cofounders is investigating the emotional component of business decisions—as it is often emotional blocks creating ineffective business and working relationships—it is not all touchy feely.

Cofounder therapy can involve, at times, concrete discussions about role ownership, equity splits, fundraising, strategic level business decisions, etc. That’s part of the beauty of this modality and another difference from traditional couple’s therapy. 

Don’t get me wrong, cofounder therapy most certainly involves soft skills, which I think are undervalued and underutilized in this most important business relationship. However, it also involves time and space to discuss concrete business issues in a way that helps founders better understand their partner’s perspectives and reach conclusions not easily accessed without a mediator.

4. The coach will take sides to end stalemates.

I’ve had several clients enter cofounder therapy expecting me to take sides or give them pointers based on my work with other cofounders. 

To clear this up, what I as the provider think is right or wrong is less important than the two of you co-creating meaning to determine what you as a partnership view as right or wrong. 

Imposing some “objective” truth onto your partnership is not nearly as valuable as helping you build the radical subjectivity of your individual and team-based points of view—which is what you are left with after our engagement ends. 

As your cofounder coach, I’m not here to play judge and jury—trying to score points with me isn’t helpful. I’m present and engaged to help you two unlock the blocks and sticking points preventing you from arriving at a shared understanding of what is right and wrong in your partnership. 

With that said, an obvious disclaimer is that in areas of outright abusive behaviors, I reserve the right to speak up. 

The other layer to add is that many coaches may approach this work differently than I do. Just as I do not believe there is “one right way” for your partnership to function, I do not think there is only one way to provide cofounder therapy. Some coaches may take sides and while I disagree with their approach based on my years of work and clinical expertise, more power to them. Find someone whose style and knowledge works best for your partnership.

5. It’s too expensive and an unnecessary expense.

False.

First, cofounder therapy is a business expense because it is vital to the success of your company. Second, it’s make or break for your company—there is no more valuable expense. You won’t get this kind of ROI from any single employee on payroll in a non-executive position. 

If you don’t have a solid cofounder partnership, your business will not sustain growth. It will fail—and not just because of the stress and burnout accompanying malfunctioning partnerships, but because your decision-making will be impaired and impact bottom line.

To call it an unnecessary expense is overlooking how vital of a component your cofounder partnership is to the long-term success of your company, and to call it too expensive is often (not always) a cop out if you are venture-backed or bootstrapped and cash-flow positive. 

Is cofounder therapy too expensive or are you not willing to put the time, energy, effort, and money into fixing this partnership?

Because if it’s the latter, then you are doomed before you’ve started. 

Re-think the expense: Improving your cofounder partnership not only will make you more money long-term by helping you raise the ceiling of your communication and teamwork, it also raises the floor and helps ensure the survival of your company by bolstering your resilience. 

I hope debunking these common myths of cofounder therapy help you better understand more of the value and importance of this work and will serve the growing number of therapists, coaches, and clients who will continue entering this space over the next five years. Cheers!