When running a startup, it traditionally isn’t recommended that you go it alone. A lot of work is required — typically too much for any one person — and a lot of different skill-sets are needed that is more likely to be dispersed across a large team rather than in one person’s hands (See: You Can’t Do It All Alone). However, there’s another key, non-obvious advantage to having a cofounder that I wanted to go over in this blogpost.
A lot of people go into founding a startup assuming they’re a machine when, in reality, they’re not. Everyone has emotion, and stress, and strain. And when it comes to running a company, all that emotion is amplified 100x. However, what if you could distribute that pain — and that joy — to multiple different people?
It’s traditionally not a good idea to see your cofounders as friends, but that’s not what I’m describing here. I’m describing that, if you run a company with multiple people, you’re in a unique opportunity where you have someone standing beside you who is experiencing exactly the same things that you are. For every rough patch in the road, you have someone you can go to and say “Hey, that shit sucked, didn’t it?” and they’ll totally understand.
This allows for an incredible ability to renew mental energy. As those highs and lows are distributed across people, they become diluted. So, it’s not just about work or skillsets; it has a lot to do with mental health, also.
…
Anyway, that’s all for this one. If you want to keep in touch, check out my biweekly newsletter! Following this will give you the low-down of all the new stuff I’m working on, as well as some things I found interesting throughout the biweek. As an added bonus, you’ll also receive the Top 10 Tools I Use on a Daily Basis to help better manage your workload and do higher quality work in a shorter amount of time.