How do we divide roles and decision-making so we don't step on each other?
The short answer
Split the company into clear domains and give each person a final say in theirs. One founder owns product and engineering, the other owns growth, sales, and money, or however your strengths cut. Overlap is where fights start. Agree that inside your domain your decision is final unless the other formally objects, and pick one person as CEO who breaks ties on company-wide calls. Two people trying to co-decide everything is slower and angrier than one clear owner per area.
Go deeper, your way
3 hand-picked resources, 3 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
✍️ Essay
✓ Link checkedFreeIntermediate
Why we picked it
This is the cleanest map of the three ways co-founders actually decide things: consensus, functional expertise (your domain, your call), and CEO tie-break. Batista's sharp point is that early co-founders sit at near-zero hierarchical distance, so nobody wants to pull rank, and that awkwardness is exactly why fights fester. It gives you the language to agree up front which mode applies where, so overlap stops being a turf war.
Why we picked it
GitLab runs a fully remote company on exactly the rule your answer prescribes: every area has one named owner who holds the final say, and everyone else can weigh in but does not co-decide. It is the most operational, copy-able playbook for one clear owner per domain, written by a company that lives or dies by it. Steal the mechanic wholesale: assign the domain, name the person, and let disagreement escalate cleanly instead of stalling.
Why we picked it
The single clearest explanation of the two documents Indian founders confuse: the founders' agreement (equity, vesting, roles, IP, departure, signed at or before incorporation) versus the shareholders' agreement (investor voting rights, drag/tag, reserved matters, signed at your raise). It nails the timing rule that trips people up: sign before shares are issued, because you cannot bolt vesting onto already-issued shares without every founder consenting. It is blunt that IP a founder built before incorporation belongs to that founder personally until a formal IP Assignment moves it to the company, which is exactly what breaks a diligence during your first term sheet.
Founders' agreement governs the co-founder relationship; the shareholders' agreement layers in investor protections later, they are not the same document
Sign at or before incorporation and always before shares are issued, or vesting cannot be applied retroactively
Pre-incorporation IP stays with the individual founder until a formal IP Assignment Agreement transfers it to the company
