On how to find a cofounder:
1/ Basically all dating/marriage analogies apply here, so go back and refresh your memory 🙂
2/ Your search would involve two buckets of people: those who are already in your rolodex (e.g. people you have worked with) and those who are not (new people). Depending on your past career and network, the weight of old/new contacts would shift; e.g. If you’re coming from a consulting background and starting a new AI company, you should definitely put more weight on meeting new people
3/ How do you meet new people? Warm intros. Even for a cold-call reach out, see if that person has a mutual LinkedIn connection and ask the mutual connection if s/he can make an intro. Do your homework and find your way in.
4/ It’s a numbers game. To meet 1 potential cofounder, you should have 20 good candidates. To get 20 good candidates, you should meet 400 people. And it’s not just 400 meetings, because relationship is built by frequency x quality, and if you like someone, you should meet them multiple times over some time span. That means the # of meetings will snowball. When you’re in cofounder search mode, you might find yourself spending all day and every day just meeting people. That’s natural, so don’t be alarmed.
5/ Build a half baked thesis. If you don’t have any idea, you can’t meet the right people, or the conversations become super vague. But also keep in mind that smart people generally don’t want to work on someone else’s idea, they want to start building ideas together from day 1. Some founders get into a hero mentality where they try to cover all the ground first and then bring in a cofounder “who can just execute”, which often doesn’t work for smart, aspiring people
6/ Chemistry first, skill sets second – You’re going to be potentially stuck with this person for a very long time. So, working with this person should be fun and invigorating. In addition to the proverbial “stuck in the airport” test, one “filter” I recommend is, how would you feel if the other person becomes more successful than you? Would you be happy about it, or would you be sick to stomach?
7/ Meet potential cofounders in a social setting – You can often see what someone’s really made of when you eat and drink with them. Also highly recommended is doing a short term, low commitment project – Best way to see if you can have a good work chemistry with someone is by doing a project together