Co-founder relationships are crucial to success. And they always have their challenges. Confidential coaching and mediation keeps the partnership — and the company — strong.
I’ve worked with dozens of strained (and thriving) founding teams over the last 7+ years
“The main thing that kills startups by 1st-time founders is not the idea, the market, or their skills. It’s picking co-founders they can’t work with.”
— Immad Akhund, founder of Mercury
Co-founder relationship coaching is confidential, structured work with both (or all) of a company’s founders to resolve conflict, rebuild trust, and align on how you lead together.
Not every co-founder starts out as someone you can’t work with. But when that ick starts to creep in, co-founders come to me for help. I work with founding teams to identify the root of their friction and guide them through repairing and rebuilding the partnership.
Co-founder unrest can be delicate — and an outside perspective is essential. It’s unwise to go to your investors, and griping to your friends isn’t the answer. You need an experienced, confidential mediator who understands the context and is aligned to your company’s long-term health, not to any one person.
Having worked with dozens of strained co-founder teams, I’ve learned to safely, swiftly, and confidentially get everyone back on the same team. The key is getting deep enough to see the root of the issues — and tapping into the excitement and satisfaction that made you venture out together in the first place.
As ventures mature and the stresses of scaling and fundraising raise the stakes, what might feel like an insurmountable problem is, in fact, quite common — most co-founder teams suffer from the same set of issues. After 7+ years of working with co-founders at fast-growing early-stage startups, I see the same patterns of conflict again and again:
Early on, everyone does everything. But as the company grows, nobody has a clear lane: employees aren’t sure who’s really in charge, nothing has an owner, and stepping on toes becomes daily friction — and it’s always the other co-founder’s fault.
One founder is all-in — 9-9-6 and then some, holidays too. The other works “smart, not long.” Neither discussed it upfront, and both think they’re doing their fair share and the other is crazy.
One founder has been nursing a grudge about the split for months — maybe years — without saying anything. Resentment compounds: it either explodes at the worst possible moment, or causes a slow, silent decay that kills morale and the company.
One founder wants a billion-dollar outcome or die trying. The other would happily sell for $10M and move to Costa Rica. Neither knows the other’s “number,” and each is confused and frustrated by the decisions the other is making.
Revenue dips, investors apply pressure, and hard conversations get avoided. Small annoyances pile up and explode in town halls and public meetings. By the time founders sit across from me, they haven’t had an honest conversation in months.
The good news: most of these patterns are fixable. The fix isn’t always complicated — but it does require getting the uncomfortable things out in the open, together, with an experienced third party to keep it productive.
The better news: every one of them is avoidable in the first place — by improving co-founder communication and putting systems in place while the company is growing quickly, but before you lose control. I help founding teams with both.
Having experienced these conflicts myself, I’ve developed a structured approach to mediation — using tools and exercises to establish philosophical alignment and open healthy dialogue, in order to dissolve misunderstandings and rebuild the foundation of your partnership.
Every founding team hits friction. The strong ones deal with it early.
What does work mean to you? What’s a productive week look like? Is equity distributed by merit? Is it a question of risk? Are we measuring time or are we measuring impact?
And, ultimately:
“Why does it feel like I’m doing all the work?”
All of these essential questions must be answered explicitly in order to align on a common culture throughout the employee chain. But all too often, co-founders come together with an idea, some motivation — and completely different understandings of these core philosophies.
Rarely is one party “right” and another “wrong.” But if you don’t address these questions up front and head-on, they tend to fester — and tension and resentment can only be overcome for so long.
As a founder myself, I’ve been there. And as a coach, I’ve developed tools and strategies to establish philosophical alignment across all these core questions that permeate throughout an organization and culture.