What are the things to be aware of when becoming a technical cofounder?
What are the things to be aware of when becoming a technical cofounder?
When developing a project with another person, before you even incorporate—and you're just devoting your time and effort, and there is an express agreement that there is a 50/50 arrangement—what do you do (documents to sign, etc..) to ensure this agreement is held?
The biggest thing you can do as a technical cofounder is maintain control of the technical assets. You can sue each other, blah blah blah, but that's miserable, expensive, and very time consuming, and nobody will do it if there isn't enough money to fight over. (which is the common case and is what you should plan for.)
Lawyers can do whatever, but if you have the servers, you have de facto control. That's the trump card.
On a longer scale, the informal definition of a technical cofounder is the best programmer you can convince to work for free. It's sort of a shitty gig and you're prone to getting shunted aside as the business develops enough to hire your replacement. This happens a lot. CEO and CTO of a going concern are not remotely equivalent positions.
To that end, I always ask- why not be the CEO? Why a fifty fifty split? If you know and trust your cofounder, and are confident they're bringing an equivalent level of expertise to the table, great, split it right down the middle, but if you have to ask, why wouldn't you get the controlling interest? In the first year, you're probably going to be the one with more to lose if you've got real product chops.
Any way you slice it, you're going to be wearing a lot of different hats as a product founder. If you just want to focus on code, go work for a big software shop. They pay great and cut down on the noise. If you want to own your own company, accept it fully and be the show.
This is amazing, it's like reading my own thoughts! Except I felt like it was weird to think that I want to take ownership and responsibility like that :')
Getting value from the non tech cofounder. In my experience, they're to be really hot in terms of contacts, marketing, sales or business development. Getting a product shipped is a lot of work, so I need to be confident that they can move the needle once ready. My ideal cofounder would be a digital marketing expert, though it's tough sorting the wheat from the chaff.
I reckon you could have a lawyer draw up a simple contract making the initial contract formal and legally binding. That said, this is really only useful if you're both living in the same country. If you're both in different countries, such a contract becomes much more difficult to enforce.
Until you get to the point actually incorporating and making the business official, I would simply go with my instincts. Do you trust your partner/co-founder? If the answer is "yes", I would stop giving this much thought (until something changes and there's reason to give additional thought). If the answer is anything but "yes" (no/maybe), I would simply walk away from the project. See if you can meet with your partner face-to-face at least once.
It's also good to keep in mind you can never eliminate all the risk involved in partnering up or co-founding a business.
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