🚀 How to strengthen relationships after co-founder matching

3 tactics to strengthen co-founder relationships

📝 Draft (and renew) “co-founder vows”

• Don't rely on a shared history or a handshake

• Create a non-legal operating agreement that outlines how each cofounder vows to lead and show up for one another as a team, covering: 

  • Your best-case scenario for the company

  • How you want to be with one another (the culture you want to create)

  • How you make decisions

  • How you want to handle feedback and conflict

  • How you’ll check-in and revisit how things are going

  • Rules around compensation, equity split and expectations of personal commitment

• Write down each co-founders’ “North Star” for the company, for their individual growth, and for the partnership, and compare alignment and differences

• Revisit these every quarter. Ask: "What did we say we wanted? Are we still living up to it?"

📅 Establish a “date night” rhythm

• Carve out non-operational time to stay connected; relationship drift happens when founders move across the country, have children, or steer separate teams

• The cadence:

  • Weekly (45min): A 1:1 to address the "unsaid." Ask: "What do you need from me this week?"

  • Quarterly (2hr+): An in-person "vacation" (e.g., a hike or dinner) to reconnect outside the office

  • Annually (3-4hr): An offsite strategy deep-dive to revisit the company’s overall direction, how you’re each feeling about it, and how you’re navigating your roles

• Discuss how each one is feeling about how roles are changing:

  • Are we each in the seat that’s best for the company now?

  • What are we each growing toward?

  • What support do we need to evolve into what the business needs next?

🤝 Use non-violent communication

• Conflict isn't the enemy; avoidance is 

• When friction arises, break down responses into: 

  • Observation: “When I saw you change the roadmap without looping me in…”

  • Feeling: “…I felt frustrated and invisible.”

  • Need: “Because I need transparency when we’re making major shifts.”

  • Request: “Would you be willing to check in with me before changing shared plans like that?”

2 traps to avoid

🚨 The “A+ student” role fallacy

• Founders often feel shame when the company outgrows their current skillset, leading them to cling to roles that deplete them

• Normalize role evolution; if your work energizes you less than 50% of the time, you are likely in the wrong seat.

• Scaling requires a deep, honest self-reflection on where your strengths meet the current needs of the business

🚨 Assuming effort = equity

• Effort ≠ impact

• Misalignment happens when compensation doesn't track with current commitment levels and/or impact (e.g. one founder is "grinding" 24/7 but resulting in little progress while the other has a slower pace but made huge progress) 

• Recalibrate rewards and expectations periodically to ensure the "input-to-output" ratio is fair to all parties; fairness is a moving target, not a one-time setup at incorporation

1 tool to leverage

📖 Best practice on strengthening co-founder relationships

• 65% of startups fail because of co-founder breakups

• Use Lockett’s co-founder check-in guide for your weekly, quarterly and annual get-togethers

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