Sticky Situations
Relationships are never easy. Whether your dating, married, working alongside someone, or even friendly, you have a ‘relationship’ with that particular person. Romance doesn’t have to be involved to officially be in a relationship. I’d argue that relationships in startups amongst founders are just as difficult to maintain as a romantic relationship, and in some cases, they are much harder.
Every now and then, I get an email from OnStartups, a community for entrepreneurs with more often than not, an insightful article about startups. Today, Dharmesh Shah penned an article entitled, The Dark Side of Startups: 5 Corrosive Co-Founder Conflicts. The article resonated well with me as being an entrepreneur, I tend to see quite a bit of these things.
To me, one of the stickiest conversations I’ve been in was about how another co-founder was working harder than another, and wanted her compensation to reflect this. Yikes. Personally, I hate those types of conversations. Dharmesh talks about 5 different scenarios that we’ve encountered before (well, at least one you should have).
- The “Who Gets What” conflict
- The “I Work Harder Than You” conflict
- The “Who Gets to Decide” conflict
- The “I Can’t Stand Jill, One of us Has to Leave” conflict
- The “We’re Going Down in Burning Flames” conflict
For me, one thing that I use to try to mitigate any of these issues from happening is to be as open and transparent upfront as possible. Don’t be afraid to state expectations, sign shareholders agreements, and negotiate a bit upfront. Not all startups are for everyone and there are plenty of ‘founding teams’ that you could join. Discuss as much as possible upfront.