Week 1: Finding a Co-founder
Today I joined the 6th Antler cohort in Sydney. Antler is an early stage global VC. They aim to de-risk entrepreneurship by providing you with the support you need to avoid the common pit falls of starting a new business.
The program is structured in 2 parts. The first part devoted to building your team (finding a co-founder) and the second part securing funding to build an MVP. Day 1 so far has been intense. Apart from the onboarding sessions, the next few weeks will be talking to as many fellow founders as possible. This mean sending countless messages and organising many virtual and coffee catch ups. This also means doing what I love best, talking to people.
Interviewing for Antler involved presenting a potential idea that you might have.
My idea is to build an engaging learning and development platform for enterprise. Currently, this platform looks like you talking to your manager about what you want to learn in terms of tech or business skills. Then 1 month later, both of you have gotten sidetracked by company deliverables and L&D is at a halt. Currently L&D is not incentivised in the best way possible. I envision a personal learning AI concierge that suggests courses and educational pathways based on your previous learning, desired promotional pathway and existing projects at the company you work at. It would also serve to match your skills and new learnings to potentially new projects within your workplace. The company would ideally pay the employee a bonus to prioritise learning on top of covering the cost. This results in higher employee engagement and lower churn for the company. The challenge with this platform is proving and showcasing ROI for the company in a quantitative manner.
Going into the program, I'm on the look out for the right co-founder to build a common product of interest. It's not so much about having the same idea. As long as we can find something that we're both interested in, it works. The emphasis I have is on finding the right founder to founder fit.
How do I go about doing this? I think of this like dating. You need a match in values and have similarity. Do their life values and ambitions match with mine? Can I talk to them forever? Or sit next to them for 14 hours in a plane?
Let's start by the values that I don't want in a co-founder.
- Lack of transparency
- Dishonesty
- Superiority complex
- Distrust
Now what are some must have values?
- Honest
- Empathetic
- Kind
- Down to earth
- Open-minded
- Self-starter
- Proactive
Sounds like I'm looking for a life partner. Guess finding a business partner is no different.
Now I need to find what others have to say about finding a co founder. Time to check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prKi3-rUPHc