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Hey, I’m Tim! ☕

Every Mon and Fri, I help you become the cofounder your startup deserves.

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Duo No Mo'

In a conventional biz/tech cofoundership, the technical cofounder fully owns the product. They make all the engineering decisions.

But, they’re expected to let the business cofounder (usually the CEO) call the shots for company-level decisions.

As AI changes the way tech companies are founded, cofounder dynamics must evolve as well.

In the beginning, tech trumps all. Building and shipping and iterating is your oxygen. No product = no company.

But at scale, strategy takes over. Things like accounting, legal, recruiting, compliance, HR, PR, fundraising, all become increasingly important.

Tech becomes a cost center: it either works or it doesn’t.

Even if the technical cofounder is involved in strategy discussions, the final say often lives elsewhere.

Ownership swings from one cofounder to the other — neither realizing it.

As a result, technical cofounders tend to drift away once they’re fully vested:

• Tron’s cofounder/CTO leaves

• Canoo’s cofounder/CTO leaves

• OpenAI’s cofounder/CTO leaves

• Unacademy’s cofounder/CTO leaves

Some people (ahem VCs) write this off as a natural progression in a startup’s life.

The problem is that anyone new they bring on won’t be nearly as invested in the product as the technical cofounder and they just won’t have the company context.

Plus, it’ll be a huge adjustment period for the business cofounder.

So, what’s the alternative?

Venn Diagram

There’s a fundamental flaw in the logic behind this traditional approach.

It assumes you can divorce strategy from product.

It also creates an environment where if the CEO has the final say on everything, the CTO might eventually stop advocating for their beliefs, knowing it’ll be vetoed.

The “I do this, you do that” approach might work for the first 100 days. But I don’t even recommend starting like that. That’s how unnecessary siloes are created.

Instead:

• Make decisions together, eg. deciding which features to prioritize.

• Work on hard challenges together, eg. prepping for a seed round.

• Celebrate wins together, eg. landing your first major customer.

In the beginning, the “I do this, you do that” model works because it gives you clarity. And when the opposite is chaos and confusion, it’s a good option.

But as you grow, collaboration and cohesion become more important.

Chaos → Confusion → Clarity → Collaboration → Cohesion

AI lowers the barrier to entry for tech products. But it also speeds up the competition.

Whenever technology democratizes creation (phone cameras, digital music synthesizers, online docs), we get a ton of crap. A flood of mediocre products.

A tech cofounder alone might build quickly, but without real-time market insights, they risk creating something no one wants.

A business cofounder can spot opportunities but fail to execute without the right product.

Tech-led teams often overbuild and business-led teams underdeliver.

The best way to stand out along all adoption curves across all industries is to apply transferrable information from more mature technologies in a way nobody else does.

• Spotify (Music → SaaS Subscriptions)
  Before Spotify, people bought individual songs or albums. Now you pay monthly.

• Amazon (Logistics → E-commerce)
  Amazon took Toyota’s lean manufacturing principles and applied it to ecom.

• Touch Surgery (Video Games → Surgery Simulations)
  Surgical training evolved from cadavers to game-like simulations.

The biggest advantage isn’t moving fast. It’s seeing the intersections first.

That requires a different kind of cofounder dynamic. One where product and strategy aren’t just aligned, but inseparable.

That’s all for now,

Tim He

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