The best starting point for looking for a co-founder: Ask about cashflow and mental availability

I spent the majority of Q1 looking for a co-founder to work on SaaS ideas. And although I haven’t found one, I learned a lot during the process:

1/ Finding a co-founder is like dating: You can’t go all-in working on a product when you just met someone. You have to learn how they think, their character, what they like and dislike, what they’re good at, and how they behave in different situations.

I’m looking at getting a co-founder like a ‘business marriage’: If you want to find someone to marry, you’d probably give them a thorough review before getting engaged. Do the same with your co-founders.

2/ Sign an agreement from the first time you meet: Lots of founders skip the founders’ agreement when they start building the company and the IP, which is a mistake. But I skipped creating an agreement when we were just exploring ideas, which I also think was a mistake.

A shared agreement of your understandings early on helps align everyone and ensure that you don’t have any negative consequences for breaking up, which is more likely to happen at this point than not.

3/ Look for cashflow availability: Lots of people reached out and said they'd ‘love to’ work together, but they need to pay rent and can’t afford to go through ideation and exploration unpaid.

This is something I didn’t think about in the beginning, but I now think one of the most important things to look for in a co-founder is their cash flow availability: Can they go on to work with you on a venture even if you go unpaid for six or twelve months?

4/ Mental availability: Some people were juggling 3-4 things. They simply didn’t have the mental availability to focus on a venture and take it from start to finish. There were a lot of promising co-founders in this category, but they just weren’t ready to commit to one single thing.

5/ Organic vs online co-founder search: At my current stage, the ‘founder-dates’ were taking more time than I wanted to allocate.

I also noticed lots of good founder teams grow organically from previous shared experiences- and not necessarily from looking for people on the internet.

Which is why I’ve decided to drop the founder search and focus on bringing employees over.

Just as some people find love on Tinder, I’m sure people find co-founders on the internet. But for me, I’d rather find someone organically , work with them, and grow the relationship from there.