Who is the right cofounder for you? 3.3
Who is the right cofounder for you? Series 3/3 Personality
So now that you know you have the person with:
The last big fat question is: can you actually work together?
And here, by far, the best practice is: start working together to see for yourself first! If you can carve out part of the project and your potential cofounder candidate agrees, the best is for you to find out by doing. Important - make sure you have the trial legal protection in place and that the arrangement is not abusive (for the potential candidate - that it is clear what (if any) compensation will be due for the work done if the dating will not continue to engagement).
In parallel - use structured get to know each other shortcuts: there is a lot we can actually find out if we engage in an active dialog! You do need to set aside time for conversations like these and if you would like additional help, use some support tools such as a cofounder worksheet to help you with the questions and topic. It helps you to get started and to make sure no important topics will be left aside.
Similar to step 2, the best way to have this conversation is for all the (potential) cofounders to answer the questions - alone and individually, taking enough time to think about it. Then, get together and discuss your answers. You will very clearly see if there are any areas which can in the future lead to misalignment and conflict. And now is still the time that you can safely decide f you can find a common ground, or whether it is better for you to thank each other and go separate ways. Very often the work I do with founders results in the teams changing shapes - either in founders or their roles. It is usually a great result that will likely happen in the future anyway, but would have been more disruptive. This way you can accelerate trust building, getting to know each other and ensure alignment where needed. Or part, with no harm done.
In addition - you can use some helpful team assessment tools out there to get more insights on your team dynamics with scientific rigour. My favourite is the leading brains startup assessment tool. Note: I do not have any commercial affiliation with the test or their authors, I am just a big fan of its benefits for founders. To my knowledge it is the only team assessment out there which does not just test Founder A, Founder B and Founder C individually and give you a summary of each - it actually tests the team dynamics, including giving you an overview of where are the blindspots (where the founders are too similar) and where is the friction risk (where the founders are too different) for the team.
With the information you have, you are much better equipped to structure your team - how you work together, best practices for team hygiene, feedback and roles - to make it successful and stable. It is not as much about finding the perfect personality, as finding a way how to work with the personalities you have found (especially assuming there is a fit for step 1 - skills and step 2 - values).
