5 Tips To Find The Perfect Co-Founder [From A $26M Entrepreneur]

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Published: December 8th, 2022

Below is a guest post by Raleigh Williams, founder of Dealmaven.io, a software company focusing on partial acquisitions of digital assets. Raleigh is a former Mergers and Acquisitions lawyer and sold his last business, Williams Entertainment Group for $26M.

Dealmaven helps entrepreneurs take chips off the table while still keeping upside in their business.

How to find the perfect co-founder?

One of the first questions a new entrepreneur faces is whether they should go alone or partner up to take over the world.

In my time as an entrepreneur, I’ve had 21 equity partners in my businesses. Some partnerships have gone amazingly well and I’ve forged friendships that will last forever. Other partnerships last for a year or two and we wonder why we ever wanted to get into business together in the first place.

I now use a set of criteria to determine the quality of potential partnership which has helped me avoid partners that are just too dissimilar from me.

# 1 Hustle

In football, coaches talk a lot about the “engine” of a player. Do they keep running after the ball or do they start walking when it seems unlikely to make a tackle?

From the very first time I meet a potential partner, I’ll assign little “to-do’s” and I will pay attention to their level of hustle. Do they drive momentum or are more comfortable taking orders?

Who is following up with who? Do they keep the commitments they agreed to take on or do tasks just linger on the business to-do list?

#2 Humility

I’ve seen countless partnerships end because one partner refuses to be coachable. Good partners know what they are good at, great partners know what they have no business having an opinion on and they stay out of it. When there is a natural division of labor amongst the partners you can take your business very far very quickly.

My favorite way to test the humility of a partner is to find a topic I know they know very little about and see if they are comfortable saying that they don’t know the answer to something. If they always have to be the smartest person in the room, I know it’ll be difficult to make decisions as a team when we don’t agree down the road.

#3 Horsepower

Although raw intellect is less important to me than the previous two, I still like to know how intellectually curious my partners are. If they haven’t read a book recently, or they don’t have a growth mindset I try to make sure that they are in a role that doesn’t require complex problem solving.

#4 Hobbies

In the first business I started after I quit practicing law, I had a partner that LOVED golf. He was always buying new golf clubs, and sneaking out to the course whenever the opportunity presented itself. I never thought much of it. Until we started running a startup together.

I felt like the business needed us there 60-70 hours a week to ensure its success. He felt like anything over 40 hours per week was keeping him from his true love, playing golf.

I’ve had similar experiences with partners that love fishing and hunting. They are great hobbies, but they tend to attract enthusiasts that are adamant about getting their hobby time in.

My golfing partner ultimately founded a business with other people that loved golf as well and it’s a part of their company culture. It just didn’t match with how much time I wanted to spend on the business which caused friction in the partnership over time.

#5 Relationships

I’ve learned that when you are in a partnership, the spouse of the partner is a key member of the group. A supportive spouse can be the difference between building a six-figure business and an eight-figure business.

I go to dinner with couples and see who calls the shots and whether they support each other. An unsupportive spouse is one of the most difficult things to combat in a fledgling business.

Find partners whose partners support the venture and are stoked to be on the journey with you.

Looking for a co-founder?

If you're wondering how to find the perfect business partner, here are 6 less conventional ways some entrepreneurs met their co-founders:

Steven found his partner through Reddit while he was looking for a brand identity designer. Together they started a $24K/year DTC brand.

Entrepreneurship student club

These founders met while they were studying and created an email plugin that has over 100,000 users.

Coworking space

Thanks to sharing a working space, a 2x failed entrepreneur and a guy who worked with army jets joined forces to build a $60K/year CRM.

Online hackathon

These events are great to have fun, challenging yourself, and meeting new people. It was the spark that made two founders develop a $72K/year tool.

Business incubator

Met while working on their respective projects, these founders launched a side hustle in 3 weeks with $300 and grew it into a $360K/year business.

Besides getting – or sending – spam, the professional social network might bring you some cool opportunities, this founder met the perfect partner there, and together they grew an Amazon service to 516K/year.

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