What should I look for in a co-founder, and what are red flags?
Look for complementary skills, shared values on money and ambition, resilience under stress, and someone you can fight with and still respect. Red flags: won't commit full-time, dodges hard conversations about equity, or you've never actually built anything together. Skills can be learned; trust and work ethic can't.
Go deeper
3 resources, 3 link-checked.
📖 Book
✓ Link checkedPaidIntermediate
The definitive, data-driven book on early founding-team decisions, drawing on quantitative research covering nearly 10,000 founders. It replaces gut-feel folklore about co-founders and equity with evidence.
A concrete, tactical guide to presenting yourself well to potential co-founders, useful whether or not you use YC's platform. It clarifies what a great co-founder is actually evaluating.
A curated collection of YC's best primary guidance on how to find, evaluate, and test a co-founder, straight from the people who've seen thousands of founding teams. It's practical, opinionated, and free.
