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Great Companies Result from Great Company

How reinvention will unlock your cofoundership’s full potential

INTRO

Hey, I’m Tim! ☕

I’ve interviewed 100+ cofounders since July.

They let me in on the good, the bad, and the ugly. The highs and the lows. Over time, I couldn’t help but notice a pattern amongst the best cofounderships.

I’d seen bits and pieces of it over the years, including in my own cofounderships, but I never fully grasped the depth of it until now.

So I decided to get to the bottom of it. I know, this sounds like clickbait, but I actually think this will fundamentally change the way you think about cofoundership.

Before we dive in, if you want stories of how top startups started and became what they are today, check out BlackBird Startup Stories by my friend Mehmet Karakus.

DEEP DIVE

The story of entrepreneurship is really a story of reinvention.

Airbnb reinvented travel by normalizing sleeping in strangers’ homes. Netflix, which started as a DVD rental service and reinvented itself before reinventing the entertainment industry. But to change the world, you need to first survive it. 

And for that, the most precious resource is a strong cofoundership. 

Think of the entrepreneurs who’ve come before us. In the early days of commerce, partnerships were crucial for dividing labor and pooling resources.

The first merchants, craftsmen, and landowners realized that combining strengths, whether in skills, capital, or networks, was the key to survival.

But they aren’t in times like this. Today, you face an environment that’s faster, more complex, and more uncertain than ever before.

Markets are evolving at breakneck speed, technology disrupts industries overnight, and global competition is fiercer than ever. In a landscape that never stops changing, neither can you.

Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman wrote that 65% of startups fail due to cofounder conflicts. A study by Yael Daniely of 423 startups highlighted several common causes of these conflicts.

It’s time to reinvent cofoundership. 

THE BIG PICTURE: Instead of building your cofoundership in hopes that it will, in turn, grow your company, use the company as a means to grow your cofoundership. 

I've seen it play out time and time again.

When I taught university students, I could assign them to groups, but I couldn’t make them become friends. Even when they chose their own teams, it didn’t guarantee friendships would form.

Yet, without exception, the highest-performing teams were those who were genuinely friends. They used their business as a foundation for building their friendship.

My cofounders and I did this too and it turned out to be the magic ingredient I struggled to articulate for so many years. Only after interviewing hundreds of other cofounders did I start to recognize the pattern.

Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.

WHY IT MATTERS: Incidentally, this shift gives your company the highest probability of success.

It’s a big shift — dumping your entire understanding of cofoundership and company-building on its head. It’s one of those things that nobody really gets at first, but once you do, you can never go back. Like riding a bike. 

As with any complex system, cofoundership can be broken down into simpler components: uniqueness, unity, and upgrading.

The magic happens when you flip the script at each of those steps and use the company as a means to strengthen your cofoundership.

Uniqueness: A Spark That Needs Fuel

Uniqueness is like fire.

First, a spark, an ember, a flicker. You’re not sure if it’s going to catch on. You feed it the right materials, give it room to breathe, and it burns hot and bright. Then, you channel it because it’ll burn you if you leave it untamed.

It pays to be unique as an entrepreneur. It’s not enough to be right. Your thoughts also have to be original. Even if you do something that’s already been done before, you have to do it differently.

This requires a mental model that’s different from everyone else’s. 

I’ve come across cofounders from all walks of life: Ivy League, refugee, high school dropout, pro athlete, and everything in between. Your desire to rebel, to carve out your own path, comes from a deeper place than simply wanting to "be different.

It’s not about rejecting the useful or proven; it’s about rejecting the idea that success can only be achieved by following a script written by someone else.

THE BIG PICTURE: What makes them great isn’t just that they’re unique, but that they let the company shape them.

When you use the company to develop yourself, you’re also making your cofoundership better. A lot of what we think of as cofounder problems are actually individual problems — personal insecurities, bad habits, or gaps in knowledge.

How do you treat the company as a tool to address your weaknesses and magnify your strengths? 

Use it to set unreasonable expectations for yourself. 

These are the kinds of standards that seem out of reach. They’re absurd to most people. Some might call it obsession, and maybe they’re right. Obsession is often the precursor to greatness.

A key distinction: unreasonable expectations do not equate to perfectionism or delusion. 

Perfectionism is rooted in the fear of failure. You become paralyzed in the process. Delusion is a detachment from reality entirely. You still have to obey the laws of physics. Unreasonable expectations, however, are different. 

They have everything to do with “doing” and nothing to do with “achieving.” It’s more useful to say “I won’t miss a workout this year” than “I’ll win Mr. Olympia this year.”

Hyperfocusing on things you can control improves the things you can’t. It allows you to both define and direct productivity — the very essence of what a cofounder does. 

Apple is the textbook example. Jobs and Woz were not alike, and that was the point. But they let the company shape them. 

  • Woz didn’t just build a product; he used the process of creating new tech to push his limits as an engineer. Had he been working in isolation, he might’ve stayed content with building technically impressive but niche devices.

  • Jobs didn’t just market a product; he used the company as a means to develop himself as a leader. He had no natural charisma in the traditional sense: rude, abrasive, arrogant. 

What they had in common was that they both had unreasonable expectations for the quality of their own work. 

Their shared commitment to excellence, despite their contrasting personalities, meant they weren’t just improving their products. They were improving each other.

As they grew, they balanced each other out.

The feedback loop strengthens your cofoundership. Building a company, at its core, is about pushing boundaries. It gives you endless possibilities for where you can place further unreasonable expectations. 

WHY IT MATTERS: Setting unreasonable expectations together creates accountability between you and your cofounder.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough to only be unique. Jobs and Woz had their fair share of fights. It wasn’t as smooth towards the end.

To be fair, Woz surviving a traumatic plane crash and Jobs battling pancreatic cancer are anomalous circumstances. But with a more united cofoundership, who knows the heights that Apple would’ve reached?

So how do you build unity within your cofoundership, especially as you each become more unique?

Unity: The Unseen Force 

Your hands can do a lot on their own, but they need to come together to clap. That’s unity.

Unity is the invisible force that keeps your cofoundership together. But it’s not what common advice has led you to believe it is.

It goes far beyond being “on the same page” or “on the same wavelength” or “seeing eye to eye.” Those are surface-level concepts of unity, ones that focus on outward alignment and coordination.

The Big Picture: True unity means developing a 6th sense for each other.

In practice, a 6th sense for your cofounder is what allows you to communicate with half-formed thoughts. You get each other, instinctively, intuitively. You know what each other is thinking, before either of you say a word.

The danger is in assuming that unity in your cofoundership requires becoming more similar as time passes. Unity is not uniformity.

Or that by default, you’ll learn to work better over time. That may be true, but it’s not what causes unity. The belief that unity will simply “happen” is a trap. Unity requires space to break character.

You’re constantly selling yourself, to investors, customers, your team, prospective employees. You want to be seen as competent, productive, optimistic, all of which you already are. 

There are so many things you think about as a cofounder, much of it you can’t express. 

  • Every decision, no matter how small, could make or break the business.

  • When things go well, there’s a fear that comes with wanting to maintain it.

  • You're expected to have all the answers, but you don’t have anyone to turn to.

  • Investors have a vision for the you that may not align with your original dream.

  • Team members may not feel satisfied or may not fully understand the direction.

Being in character doesn’t mean you’re faking it, it just means you're presenting a version of yourself that's in line with the roles you’re expected to play.

Except “cofounder” isn’t a job description; it’s a lifestyle.

You will, like a guitar string, snap if you’re strung too tight for too long. You need permission to not be “on” when you’re with your cofounder. 

Each of those concerns I listed above are opportunities to grow closer with your cofounder. To drop the facade. To have a heart-to-heart. To be human.

Breaking character is an act of defiance against the emphasis on constant self-optimization. It’s a chance to show the parts of you that you hide behind the polished exterior.

It comes easier if you’ve been friends for a while, which is why most serial entrepreneurs recommend choosing cofounders who you already know really well. Even if you don’t, not all hope is lost. 

Take a look at this poll before you read on.

Which of the 3 P's should you align on first?

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Those of you who know me know that I have trouble with professionalism. I believe we need to drop the hollow decorum we’ve been conditioned to use, especially in professional settings.

Rigid adherence to unnecessary formality is likely not your favorite thing either, given that you’re an entrepreneur. No more plastic politeness.

Saying the right thing is more important than saying things right.

One of the clearest signs you have a great cofounder is that you can joke with them. Not just polite laughter at carefully chosen words, but real humor. Teasing, roasting, mocking, bantering.

All in good fun, all out of love. Poke at each other’s mistakes without malice. When you can take a swipe at each other and laugh it off, you’re signaling a few important things. 

  1. You trust each other enough to know it’s not personal.

  2. You’re comfortable being honest and vulnerable, even if it’s through humor. 

  3. You’re not afraid to handle the uncomfortable moments. 

That’s why it’s important to align first on personality, not purpose, not passion.

I know that sounds counterintuitive. After all, the advice you usually hear is to find a cofounder who shares your vision, someone who’s just as passionate about the idea or has complementary skills.

But startups change, often dramatically. The product, the market, even the fundamental model might shift, and when it does, passion can fade and purpose can pivot.

Personality is what’s left when everything else is up in the air. 

Take Loom’s cofounders, Vinay, Joe, and Shahed. They pivoted five times before becoming a unicorn. Let’s be honest, no one wakes up in their 20s dreaming about screen recorders.

What kept them together wasn’t their passion for a product but their ability to unite as a team.

WHY IT MATTERS: When you couldn’t care less about impressing each other, you realize that you’re actually more impressive than any character you could play. 

But don’t get complacent. If your cofoundership doesn’t continue to grow, your company will outgrow you. Or worse, one of you will outgrow the other.

Upgrade: Moving Beyond Compatibility

The puzzle piece metaphor for cofounder compatibility is broken.

It suggests that once you find the "right" fit, you simply snap the pieces together and voilà, everything falls into place.

The narrative fixates on the serendipity of the initial meeting, as if meeting at a college dorm or bumping into each other at a hackathon were guarantees of long-term success. 

If that were true, so many startups wouldn’t crumble from cofounder conflicts later down the road. 

THE BIG PICTURE: Once you’re sufficiently unique and united, use the company to continue to upgrade your cofoundership. Deeper, stronger, more vulnerable, robust, adaptable. More history. More chemistry.

A better metaphor is a jazz duet. There is no perfect fit. There is only being in tune and on tempo.

Even the most seasoned jazz musicians don’t aim for perfection. You riff off each other, responding, anticipating, improvising. Reacting to the moment, the audience, the mood, the vibe. You’re constantly looking to each other for cues. Recalibrating.

A prime example is the Common Room cofounders.

  • CEO Linda Lian didn’t know Francis, Viraj, or Tom before reaching out cold on LinkedIn. It took multiple tries to land even a casual coffee chat.

  • But their shared vision and mutual interest were enough to get them in the same room.

  • Then, deciding to quit their jobs and pursue a company forced them to commit.

  • As they launched their product, they learned to use the company to grow their friendship with one another.

  • As a result, they’ve scaled to over 100 people and raised over $50M. 

Every cofoundership has its own rhythm, but many don’t stop to listen. 

If continuous customer discovery is necessary for product-market fit, then continuous cofounder discovery is necessary for cofounder-cofounder fit. If your company were static, you’d have monotonically increasing confidence in your cofoundership.

But your company shouldn’t be and neither should your cofoundership. 

As your company grows, so do your responsibilities. Each new responsibility pulls you in a different direction. Your time, once fluid and spontaneous, is now accounted for every hour of the day. 

This is where cofounderships can strain. The thing is, this is normal. You can’t be expected to maintain the same relationship when you’re both juggling eleven different hats.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the “magic” of your early cofounder days is just gone. You’ve built something together, but as the company expands, so can the distance. 

Therefore, it’s normal to feel tension, unease, uncertainty, even temporary discomfort. It’s a sign of growth. What’s important is that you use the company to continuously upgrade your cofoundership. 

People at this stage reach out to me and ask what they can do to strengthen their bond. They ask for rituals and routines to implement. The temptation is to think you need something formal, something more “professional,” as your company grows.

But that’s the exact opposite of what made you cofounders in the first place. 

Back to the jazz duet example. Leveling up the band could mean playing more challenging songs or performing in front of larger crowds. Musicians don’t wait until they've mastered every note to step onto a bigger stage.

They take on the challenge of larger audiences and tougher songs because those performances push them to be better, together. 

WHY IT MATTERS: As a result, the briefest glance, the slightest head nod or the faintest smile (that nobody else even notices) communicates a world of information between the musicians.

The same goes for cofounders.

In your case, leveling up the company could mean building more sophisticated products or serving more users. You can’t spend endless time perfecting your relationship in isolation before you do that.

The growth of the company, the demands of scaling, and the pressure of bigger challenges force you to level up your partnership. So you might as well seek it out with that in mind. 

In the beginning, your taste is higher than your ability to execute. A beginner musician can appreciate a great song but can’t replicate it.

You may see great cofounderships and recognize the chemistry, but you can’t make the magic yourself yet. Mastery is closing the gap. 

It just takes practice.

Stop thinking of the company as something you build together. Start thinking of it as something that builds you. It’s the training ground for your cofoundership.

Because a strong cofoundership doesn’t just react to change, it drives it. It creates the conditions for success.

Nobody denies the importance of health and wellness, yet many neglect it until they get a bad blood test. Cofoundership is no different. Nobody denies the importance, but it’s often overlooked until there’s a problem. 

Where do people go wrong?

The speed at which startups grow today means that working on your cofoundership after scaling is too late. Waiting for problems to surface means you’ll forever be stuck in crisis mode.

That’s why so much common expert advice is misleading. When experts are wrong, it's usually because they're experts on an earlier version of the world. 

Entrepreneurship is hard enough. Without the right cofoundership, it’s nearly impossible. With it, you have a fighting chance.

Because the truth is, great companies result from great company. 

LAST LOOK

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Tim He
Founder & CEO