- Here's how it felt in the weeks before
I resigned from my last startup,
I couldn't sleep.
I couldn't eat.
My heart rate felt pegged at 120.
I had reached a point where I couldn't agree
with my co-founder over the future of the company.
I had to step away from the startup
for which I shed blood, sweat, and tears.
I didn't want to do it,
but I had reached a point physically and mentally
where I couldn't handle the stress anymore.
This was me at the end of 2010.
Every co-founder situation is different,
but one common problem that keeps popping up
revolves around how founders engage in conflict.
Either not enough or far too much.
Co-founder disputes are the number one early startup killer,
but it doesn't have to be that way.
Let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
When things are going up into the right,
it's easy to miss things going wrong underneath you.
My first startup (indistinct) grew 10X yearly
and became a top 200 site on the web
in just about two years.
By the end of 2010, our growth had flat-lined.
And when the business needed me and my co-founder the most,
we couldn't get along.
The reality is you can't count on good times forever.
For every startup out there,
no matter how big or how small you are,
winter is coming.
My co-founder and I were friends for years.
We met in college.
But we learned the hard way, history is not enough.
You've got to keep the lines of communication open
just like any relationship.
You know what happened?
We had too little conflict.
With hindsight, I now realize my rift with
my co-founder was entirely preventable.
We stopped spending time together
because we were avoiding conflict.
It was a double whammy.
Right at the moment when we needed to come together,
we hadn't resolved our conflicts for so long
that our relationship went out the door too.
I had skipped the hard work of embracing conflict
and resolving it.
Why did this happen?
Well, everyone knows great startups
have great co-founder relationships.
So that's what I wanted.
But what I mistook for the appearance of good
was actually avoidant.
I was more focused on making it seem like
we were good co-founders,
so much so that I failed to actually create that situation.
And so much of life as a founder is actually
about avoiding this kind of situation.
Don't make it look like a good startup
or a good co-founder relationship,
spend time actually making it a good startup
and actually a good co-founder relationship.
And it was my fault.
Rather than take the harder road
of standing up for what I knew,
whether it was about product, personnel or strategy,
I buckled, I self abandoned.
I sacrificed what I knew to be right
at the altar of this idea that good co-founders don't fight.
And as I did that, my resentment grew.
I think of our brains as sort of separate parts.
There's a narrative prefrontal cortex that is trying
to explain everything, what you might view as conscious,
and then there's the rest of your brain,
nonverbal but very much a part of how we think.
Those parts speak to us through emotions and feelings.
My conscious narrative wanted to keep up the fiction
that we were good co-founders for one another
while deep down, large parts of me knew it just wasn't true.
When that tension became too great, it felt like
the non-verbal parts of me started going on strike.
That's why I had that super high pulse,
not being able to eat, not being able to sleep.
I was at war with myself.
I was at my breaking point.
If you haven't spent time with your co-founder
outside of work, ask yourself why.
Actually, are you at a point like that right now?
Do you try to keep your interactions at a minimum?
That's a tell.
It's an indicator that something isn't working.
My first executive coach, Cameron Yarbrough of Torch
taught me that this is usually the moment the four horsemen
of the apocalypse show up.
Defensiveness, criticism, contempt and stonewalling.
When Psychologist John Gottman, who's the author of
The Four Horsemen concept,
identifies those behaviors in marital relationships,
he's able to predict relationship failure
with amazing accuracy.
And the same thing holds true for co-founders.
If too little conflict is your problem,
here's what you need to do.
If you don't agree on something,
don't leave the room until you have a resolution.
If an hour is not enough, cancel your weekend,
go on a hike, even go camping, get out of Dodge,
have a retreat and decide to do it on the spot.
Get back on the same page.
Make time for this.
Cancel other things.
Those other things can wait.
Some of the best billion dollar company founders I know
did exactly that.
Those founders are now billionaires many times over.
Learn how to communicate exactly what you're feeling
and in the right way.
Feedback is actually really key in these scenarios.
And that's one of those things that I didn't do.
You need to err on the side of giving more feedback.
Embrace conflict instead of abandoning yourself.
I've always valued harmony in my interactions
with everyone I've worked with,
but with time and again, sometimes the hard way,
I've learned that you can't sacrifice what to be right
in order to get that harmony early.
You've got to fight.
Don't swallow your words.
If you have a point, make sure you are heard.
On the other hand, there are lots and lots
of co-founders situations where there is
way too much conflict.
Some of you might be saying,
"Too little conflict, how is that a problem?
"We're fighting absolutely all the time."
Trust me, as often as conflict avoidance happens,
it can be as common to have way too much conflict.
Here's what it feels like when there's
too much conflict on your team.
It can be hard to really make decisions.
Every proposal or communication ends up being viewed
through the lens of how will
the different factions view this.
You might find yourself horsetrading.
I can have this if you can have that.
Meetings just end up long and acrimonious.
Team members get paralyzed over small decisions,
sometimes even just trying to figure out what venue
to bring these issues to to make that decision.
And even after a decision is made,
the decision is retread and questioned over and over again.
Old arguments are renewed and outcomes of
those prior decisions are used as
justifications in new conflicts.
The sheer fact that you might be able to
identify factions in the first place
is a clear warning sign.
The worst is if you find yourself blending
unrelated decisions due to different wants and desires
of different sets of people on the team,
if you start seeing that,
man, you're probably in a bad spot.
When founders are in a situation where
they're fighting about everything all the time,
It usually means that their individual roles
are not well-defined enough.
People actually might not know
who's in charge of what and why.
Here's what you have to do.
Make a list of all the areas needed for your business
then figure out who's best at each part
and assign one person to it.
At Ycombinator, I remember it was the founders of Heroku
who famously did this.
They made a list of all the different tasks
that the company did.
And for every single one, they found exactly one owner,
a founder or executive whose ass was on the line
to deliver that thing.
That's accountability.
This is useful for two reasons.
First, it makes it clear who to talk to.
The process becomes obvious to everyone
because it's written down, everyone can see it.
The owner makes sure to collect feedback
before they make their decision.
That's one of the key parts of being an owner.
But second, it means you can move fast.
There's no question at that point who makes the call.
The owner makes the call.
And when the call is made,
everyone agrees to disagree and commit.
That way, you're not fighting the same battles
over and over,
and you're not waiting weeks, months,
or sometimes years for a decision.
Finally, if you find that your co-founder conflicts
are so fundamental, you really can't move forward,
you have to start listening.
The loudest person in the room shouldn't necessarily
and automatically be the one who wins.
This is actually a conflict avoidance of a different stripe.
One that doesn't give any space to
the competing ideas at all.
Listen first and let the other side know you hear them.
One of the best ways to think about this
is actually a steel man hypothesis.
If you can actually listen to the other person
and repeat back the strongest version of their argument,
that's a steel man instead of the straw man.
I saw a fantastic thread by Stripe PM, Shreyus Doshi,
that I wanted to highlight here.
Link in the description for the original thread.
He says, "Listening is hard because we fear being wrong.
"We desire validation.
"We have a lack of curiosity and an urge to impress.
"And we have a feeling of superiority."
Here's a clip from the movie, "The Darkest Hour"
Do you find yourself interrupting people like this?
- Let us therefore avoid being dragged down
a slippery slope with talk of a negotiated peace.
- Slippery slope, the only--
- I suspect Italy and Germany--
- The only slippery slope--
- Pushed together so deeply involved in negotiations
that we should be unable to turn back--
- Nonsense. Bostonian informed me the only slippery slope--
Would you stop interrupting me while I am interrupting you.
- Shreyas points out that even if we don't speak to people
the way Winston Churchill does,
we often think that way in our heads.
Our internal monologue literally interrupts
what people are saying with what we are thinking.
I have to admit, I'm terrible at this.
I'm often so busy trying to figure out what I want to say
that I fail to fully internalize and be present around
what is being said by others.
Especially when those things are counter to my beliefs
or convictions I might have,
those are the hardest moments,
but those are often the most important moments
for you to really, really listen.
Some of you watching this have actually been through
all of these exercises and more.
For those of you who feel like you're coming to
the end of your rope, but actually even for the people
who are in the middle of it,
I have one final piece of advice.
Get help.
It really helps to get outside of your head
and talk through what you're seeing with frankly,
all kinds of people.
Other founders and friends, exec coaches,
whoever you trust who you can talk to.
Don't be afraid to bring in the pros.
And in fact, I recommend people bring them in early.
Be open to getting professional help either individually
to help you respond to the ongoing conflict or as a group,
similar to how a marriage counselor can save a marriage.
Hire an exec coach.
I can't recommend it enough for founders,
especially when a company killing conflict is on the line.
If you're looking for help,
I recommend checking out torch.io,
which is the number one marketplace for coaches
that we funded and initialized.
Torch was founded by my first exec coach, Cameron Yarbrough.
He helped me through so many moments
just like the ones we've been talking about today.
Check out the link in the description
for my interview with Cameron about
how exec coaching really changed my life.
Athletes have coaches and they have trainers
who help them get to peak performance.
How is knowledge work any different?
It can be just as demanding.
One thing we got to talk about though is cost.
A lot of founders, especially early on
are freaked out about it.
Well, of course, you shouldn't go crazy with this
and you should find coaches that are appropriate
for your stage of company.
You should also know that making the wrong decisions
will cost you your company and your vested equity.
This is not a place to cheap out.
Third party help when you're at an intractable state
can literally save your startup.
Finally, involve your board, your investors,
your advisors, your closest founder friends.
You can't do this alone.
When you're going through this stuff,
I know for a fact there's an embarrassment.
You don't want people to know.
Well, you shouldn't broadcast this to the world.
You do need your most trusted people close to you.
They can help you see things through a new perspective
and just help you through this really tough time.
Co-founder conflict remains
the number one killer of startups.
If you watched this all the way to the end,
I really hope this was a helpful guide for you
as you navigate these tough times.
I want you to know, if this is your problem right now,
you're not alone.
So many people, pretty much all founders I've ever talked to
have some form of this.
If you want to talk, you can DM me on Instagram right now.
I'll do whatever I can, at least make sure you get help.
Co-founder conflict is hard, but you can overcome it.
I believe in you.
Thank you again for watching all the way to the end.
Please click subscribe and hit the bell icon.
And I will see you next week.
Thanks.
(upbeat music)