How to Find Your Perfect Co-Founder

By: Jay Canning (CEO)
Category: Entrepreneurship
On: 7 February, 2024

Got a killer idea for a new business? Great!

But going it alone is not always the best path. There are many reasons for you to consider creating your new business together with a co-founder, or even several co-founders.

The problem is, your choice of co-founder can be the difference between a thriving business and a total failure - even if the idea itself is great.

In this article, we’re going to look at a little-known but highly effective method you can use to ensure that you choose the best possible co-founder and make your business idea the total success it deserves to be.

Before we get to this method though, we need to run through a quick but essential checklist...

Essential Co-Founder Qualities

This goes without saying, but we’ll still say it, because it’s essential.

There is a set of qualities that you need your co-founder to have, regardless of anything else.

Firstly, it’s absolutely essential that you and your co-founder have complete alignment when it comes to your values and mission.

Secondly, you need to know that your co-founder has the right abilities and experience for the vital role they will perform.

And last but not least, your co-founder needs to be someone you can trust completely. This can be the hardest quality to nail down, because deep trust can take a long time to develop.

One of the best ways to address the risk here is to complete a small project together first, before you tackle the big business.

Tackling a mini-task together gives you the opportunity to have a ‘trial period’, to see how you really work together as you solve problems in the field.

Once you do decide to move forward, it’s also really important that you legally formalise your roles at the start. This will give both of you the security and peace of mind you need.

Now we have the essentials out of the way, let’s look now at the little-known method you can use today to select your best possible co-founder!

The Secret to Finding Your Perfect Co-Founder

The real key to finding an excellent co-founder is compatibility. You might have heard this before. You’re probably thinking, ‘so what?’

But here’s the thing. Hardly anyone actually knows what criteria to apply when making an assessment of co-founder compatibility.

We’re now going to reveal the exact criteria you need to make the wisest choice you can when choosing your co-founder.

The best possible way you can make a judgement about compatibility is by looking at thinking profiles.

Not just for your potential co-founder, but also for yourself - because compatibility is a two-way thing.

By understanding the mechanics of how you think and make decisions, and comparing them to those same mechanics in your potential co-founder, you can truly see how good of a match you might be.

And here’s what might surprise you the most. You’re not looking for similarity and common ground.

Those are certainly useful sometimes, but what you’re really looking for is diversity of thinking profiles.

Effective Intelligence breaks thinking down into individual components, and so if you and your co-founder have strong preferences in different areas of thinking, you’ll be setting yourself up for success, because you’re stronger together.

The reason for this is that business requires complex decisions to be made effectively, and the only way to do that is with all the bases of thinking covered.

It’s almost impossible for one person to do this, so having two or more people with completely different thinking skill sets, working together, increases the chances of success overall by a huge amount.

Through decades of experience in a broad variety of major industries, we have seen this dynamic play out over and over again. There is honestly nothing more effective.

Evolve Your Decision-Making

Once you select your co-founder wisely, according to the principle of thinking diversity, the benefits of analysing thinking don’t stop there.

When you’ve already started with your business operationally, you can keep going with the focus on thinking, by customising your evolving strategies according to the thinking profiles of yourself, your co-founders, and even the rest of your team.

This allows you to tailor your strategy to play to all the strengths of your team, and you’ll find that everyone is significantly more productive this way. It will make a huge difference to your bottom line.

All of this is made possible with the Rhodes’ Thinking-Intentions Profile. Optimising your business starts with gaining awareness of your own thinking first. And you can start gaining an understanding of how you think today, right over here. Don’t miss out!