We plan to bring eChai across 100 cities in India. It starts with eChai Startup Demo Day on 26 September, all in person. 13 cities confirmed, 726 founders registered. Any city that reaches 20 interested founders is on too. See your city

Co-founders, team & legal

Finding a co-founder

Pick a partner as carefully as a spouse.

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Do I actually need a co-founder, or can I go solo? You don't strictly need one, but the data says teams outlast solos: complementary skills, shared load, and someone to argue you out of bad calls al... Beginner 3 resources → Where do I actually find a co-founder if I don't already know one? Start with people you've already worked with, ex-colleagues and classmates beat strangers because you've seen them under pressure. If your network ... Beginner 2 resources → How do I 'date' a potential co-founder before committing? Run a real trial: work on a scoped project together for a few weeks, ideally under a deadline, and pay attention to how they handle disagreement, d... Intermediate 3 resources → How should my co-founder and I split equity, and is 50/50 a mistake? Split on the future, not on who showed up first. Equal-ish splits are fine when both partners are full-time and equally committed, but a hard 50/50... Intermediate 3 resources → How do we divide roles and decision-making so we don't step on each other? 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, s... Beginner 3 resources → Should I give a co-founder equity or a salary if they join after I've already started? A true co-founder gets meaningful equity, a cliff, and vesting, and takes real risk with you. Someone who joins for a salary and a small grant is a... Intermediate 3 resources → How do investors judge a founding team, and does a solo founder get penalized? Investors bet on teams because startups are too hard for one person to carry, and a solo founder does face a slightly higher bar, especially at see... Advanced 3 resources → Can I find a co-founder in a different city, and how do we make a remote founding team work? Yes, and for founders outside the big startup hubs a remote co-founder is often the only way to reach the right person. But a distributed founding ... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I bring on a co-founder who's still at a job or in college without getting burned? Do the paperwork before they touch the codebase. Someone employed elsewhere may have an employment contract that claims IP they build on the side, ... Advanced 3 resources → What's the difference between a co-founder and an early key hire, and how do I decide which I need? A co-founder shares the risk, the ownership, and the sleepless nights, and you can't fire the relationship, only the person. An early hire brings a... Beginner 3 resources →

eChai Partner Brands The partnership →