Frustrated And Outperforming Your Cofounder?
Follow these four simple steps to increase teamwork and improve performance
Cofounder relationships can make or break your startup. These complex relationships set the foundation for your entire business, create its culture, and determine its ceiling.
As the most vital relationship in the business and often the one under the most strain, it’s important that it feel equitable.
You need your partner to be that — a partner — and not dead weight.
But everyone handles stress differently.
Some individuals respond by focusing on the task at hand. Like firefighters, they overextend themselves to address the immediate issue and then crash at some point in the future.
Others carry the stress like a 100-pound jacket. They trudge forward as if walking through a swamp in knee-deep mud. And they start to underperform.
What’s important isn’t how you and your cofounder manage stress individually, it’s how you manage it as a team that determines your effectiveness.
Your cofounder can be your greatest source of support — the one person on the planet who knows what it’s like to be in your shoes — or a source of distress that depletes mental and emotional resources better spent on your company.
Research shows that 90% of new ventures start as teams, not solo entrepreneurs, and 65% of high-potential startups fail due to cofounder fallout.
This data underscores that imbalances in the founder partnership contribute to the success or failure of a company. Read the list below to turn things around.
Steps to increase teamwork and improve performance
1. Discuss perceived imbalances from a business perspective.
A great place to start your conversation is within the context of your business.
Highlight observations about the other person’s behavior without conveying judgment or criticism. Ask if they have the ability to engage in different actions and how you can best support them doing so.
If they don’t have the capacity, formulate a plan to support them through this difficult time and set guidelines for when you can each expect their performance to improve.
Listen for opportunities to take responsibility for the ways you may be contributing to the dysfunction. If your partner mentions your behaviors, take ownership and model how to receive feedback.
2. Clarify your mutual values and goals.
Ensure that you’re both on the same page about your build strategy.
Clarify your roles, the KPI’s for each role, and your plan to meet those expectations. Identify where each of you may need additional support.
Clarify your goals and expectations for the company. Talk through build and exit strategy, expected years of investment, fundraising — lay it all out on the table.
If there are disagreements, have focused conversations to discover why.
What are your specific areas of agreement and disagreement?
What reasoning supports each person’s perspective?
What are the best ways for you both to move forward for the betterment of your company?
Try to see the problem from the other person’s shoes. Take time to convey that you can understand their perception prior to sharing yours. Then encourage them to do the same.
Make sure you’re aligned on your vision for the company and your roles. If there’s still a disagreement and disconnect, move to the next step.
3. Shift the focus to your emotional communication process.
Often, role-related disputes and imbalances in cofounder performance are related to emotional dynamics.
The ways in which you communicate with one another impacts performance and how you engage in problem-solving. Try to observe the communication patterns within your relationship and share them with your partner.
Bracket out the business component and focus on using “I-messages” to emphasize the way their behaviors make you feel. Encourage them to express their emotional reactions too.
Keep the pace of conversation slower than business discussions and take breaks when needed.
4. Work together to address communication breakdowns.
Once you’ve identified the disconnection — whether it’s business or personal — work together to determine the best course of action.
Even if it feels like one person is the “problem” and the “under-performer,” both you and your company are impacted.
It’s important to discuss both the problem and the solution from a joint standpoint. Emphasize words like “we” and “lets” rather than getting lost in the “I’s” and “you’s.”
And contextualize the problem. Convey that it’s not one person’s issue by emphasizing the way you need to work together for increased support and better team-based performance.
To better illustrate how this works in practice, read this case study
Names and details changed to maintain confidentiality.
As a cofounder psychologist, I recently worked with a pair of SaaS founders. They came to me after a significant disagreement that led to mutual frustration over a role-related dispute.
As seasoned entrepreneurs six years into their current venture, they entered coaching with mutual respect and professionalism but struggled to address emotional issues in a proactive manner.
Andy controlled the product teams, Craig was responsible for marketing and sales.
Craig was frustrated with Andy, who would not allow Craig to interact with the product team, despite his detail-oriented expertise and success as a solo founder building a similar company several years ago.
While they had lengthy discussions related to roles, expectations, values, and goals, they were unable to find a solution. Their mutual frustration escalated with each circular conversation and led to ongoing arguments.
Early in our process, it became clear that they weren’t having strategic issues, they were having emotional issues manifesting in business structure.
We focused on slowing down and uncovering the emotional undercurrents influencing the makeup of their company.
Craig shared his feelings of frustration at Andy’s decision to keep him out of product meetings and Andy expressed his fears associated with Craig’s management style, which he believed would not mesh with their culturally diverse product team — a group he worked with in a previous venture and wanted to protect.
Their relationship dynamic played out in a consistent pattern:
Craig’s anger toward Andy manifested in critical, passive-aggressive comments
Andy responded by protecting his team and feeling stressed from shouldering the sole responsibility for the company’s most important decisions
Craig felt left out of key decisions, unrecognized for his contributions elsewhere in the organization, and resentful that he couldn’t share his expertise
Sensing Craig’s resentment, Andy felt justified his decision to keep him away from the product team and other key decisions
After contextualizing the dynamic described above, Craig took ownership of his anger and conveyed it in more productive ways.
He shared that beneath his angry exterior, he felt hurt. Andy’s unwillingness to involve him in product conveyed a sense of mistrust that betrayed the foundation of their partnership.
This honest, direct conversation allowed Andy to better understand that his fears were unfounded — based on his tendency to bottle emotions up, put the team on his back, and move forward during times of distress — and were counterproductive for himself, Craig, and the company.
Over a series of meaningful conversations, Andy identified that he would benefit from more strategic conversations about product and would feel a sense of relief in shifting to a more collaborative approach to decision-making.
After integrating Craig into the product discussions, it became clear that the interpersonal concerns Andy had were more related to the tension in their cofounder dynamic than the way Craig interacts with other teams. Andy noticed the value of Craig’s input and regretted keeping him under-involved for so long.
Craig felt satisfied with his increased level of involvement and greater role-related fulfillment. Though still frustrated by the past decisions, he felt less resentment and a stronger sense of teamwork than the start of coaching.
The cofounder relationship makes or breaks a startup
Going through the pains of entrepreneurship is hard enough. But growing a company while managing a toxic cofounder partnership leads to burnout, resentment, and poor decisions that impact your entire company.
If you want to improve the effectiveness of your business, invest in its most important relationship. Follow the four steps above to optimize your mental and emotional clarity so you can get back to doing what you do best.