How rigorous should the process of finding a co-founder be?
6 recorded positions from 5 people, first published Mar 2007. They do not agree — the readings below are what each one actually argued.
Working together first is necessary to know if someone is a good cofounder conference meetings dont suffice
Paul Graham · published Mar 2007 · hedged
Meeting a cofounder through venues like user's groups or conferences is possible but unlikely to work well.
You need to have worked with someone to know whether you want them as a cofounder.
source Why to Not Not Start a Startup
Paul Graham · published Mar 2024
The optimal startup has two or three founders, and the only way to judge a prospective cofounder is to work with them on projects.
What you need is someone good at what they do and whom you work well with, which can only be assessed by working together.
source How to Start Google
Also on the record
Matt Clifford · published Jul 1, 2024
You can successfully start a company with a stranger; the conventional wisdom that co-founders must be long-standing acquaintances is survivorship bias.
Historically it was nearly impossible to meet a co-founder as a stranger, so the venture community only ever observed founders who had known each other for years.
55:15 Founding with a stranger can work conventional wisdom against it is survivorship bias
Markus Villig · published Nov 13, 2024
Founders searching for a co-founder should persist past dozens of rejections and look outside their own networks, including random online forums
His own technical co-founder came from a random Estonian forum after 30 people turned him down
12:56 Persist past many rejections and search outside your own network
Eléonore Crespo · published May 9, 2025
Choosing a co-founder should be run as a rigorous sourcing exercise — mapping the best entrepreneurship schools and proven founders, asking hundreds of people in your network for recommendations, building a ranked list, and back-channeling on personality traits before ever making contact.
You are committing to spend roughly the next twenty years with this person, so the selection deserves the same rigor as executive recruiting.
7:33 Cofounder search should be a rigorous sourcing exercise like executive recruiting
Sam Corcos · published Dec 11, 2023
The biggest cofounder mistake is not really knowing who your cofounder is — founders should run reference diligence on a potential cofounder before starting a company together
He knows someone who cofounded with a person who embezzled money from the company; that founder's reputation is now tainted, and a few conversations with people who knew the person would likely have surfaced the risk
57:51 Run reference diligence on a potential cofounder before starting a company
Your assistant can query this graph directly — 6 positions here, 19,646 across the corpus. Add 996.fm over MCP.