How can you effectively screen potential co-founders for your startup?

When looking for co-founder look for someone who is willing to go through worst with you, look for someone who is talented but more than talent look for vision, you can get many talented people with no vision and ambition, so the major factor based on which I would select a co-founder would be a person who has talent and has same drive and is willing to stand with your vision for 10-20 years. Drive is such a important factor cause drive can to the places where talent and only hard work cannot take you, drive defines a persons outlook towards his life and what he wants to contribute for progress of society

It pays to also make a list of what you value or what you consider as basic principles in your business model. Skills and knowledge that you or your co-founder lack in could sometimes be solved with outsourcing. However, not investing in time to truly define your values and work alongside others with similar values may make or break a sustainable long term healthy partnership.

Choosing co-founders is just like building a team: 1. Find people who want the same things for the company as you do. If you dream big, they should too! 2. Look for people who are good at things you're not. 3. Make sure you like working with them. It's like picking friends—you want people who you enjoy spending time with and who don't drive you crazy. 4. Find people who are good at solving problems. Starting a business is like solving puzzles, so you want co-founders who are good at figuring things out when they go wrong. 5. Before making things official, you can also work on a small project together. It's like a trial run to see if you make a good team.

J’ai constaté que l’expérience fondée sur des exemples vécus (60%) avec des données quantitatives pertinentes (30%) sont plus importantes que l’intuition (10%).

Identifying a potential co-founder's compatibility in terms of values, visions, and capabilities plays a vital role in identifying a common base for your startups objective

Meetups are also a great place to network. Find local meetups of the same industry, etc and be proactive at these events. Sometimes, even a random chat with the passenger next to you on an airplane, bus, train etc or even your Uber driver can spark unexpected conversations and new ventures.

In my experience, the most import factor for co-founders is trust. It's also the hardest to find and build. I'd start by evaluating your network based on who you trust and why. Who shares your value system? Then narrow that list down by skills that you think complement your own to build a startup. It is very likely you'll find a good handful of people by doing this. This evaluation criterion will also help you as you evaluate out-of-network potential co-founders you meet.

Don’t forget that face-to-face interviews still can’t beat any online technology in the final stages of assessment. Any communications trainer/expert will tell you that body language speaks more about the other party way more than you think!

I would always meet with your potential co-founders in person (unless costs are very high). You'll likely be spending nearly your entire day with this person for years, so an accurate read on who this person is will pay massive dividends.

You don’t have to give everything away upon offer. If you feel confident with someone, you can still structure ownership around performance. Think of it like a marriage. It truly is. Get that prenup. Iron out details and set expectations. Marriages and partnerships are tough. Expect it to not work, start there and protect.

If they seem like the right person, just start working with them! If needed, get a simple founders agreement or other protection in place so you can safely evaluate your working dynamic and their skills. It should become clear if this person is the right person or not quickly while working so closely together.

References are key! In today’s day and age, social media profiles/reviews do tell us quite a bit already. However, we should not be too quick to “judge a book by its cover”. If the potential co-founder struggles to provide a reference for one reason or another, then seek/ask for their portfolios which can prove their experience and follow up with some quick “research” after.

Worry less about who’s doing what, when and how. Work on building trust. If the relationship doesn’t have trust, it just won’t work. It’s all about how you communicate and what each other’s expectations are. Make sure they’re aligned.

As you work together, be very honest with yourself about how you feel about working with your co-founder(s). Co-founders spend almost all their time together for years. Ask yourself is this someone I want to spend years building next to? It's a good hack to identify potential value differences between you and a co-founder.

Although this may sound a bit “cheesy”, I find most times “gut feeling” is the way to go when I have ticked all the checkboxes in my list and done my due diligence. We as human beings have “in built” mechanisms that primarily were meant to “protect us from harm and danger”. Being able to block out “all the noise”, then take time to “tune in” to our “inner voice” and intuition, is a skill worth cultivating and fine-tuning. In most instances, our intuition will work in our favour, once we learn how to listen to it and harness it more.

Go camping with them. Oddly, Linked in says I have to say more 125 characters. Hm. Really, before signing anything, just go camping with them. That's it.

here‘s what helped me to assess my partners for my two companies 🌱 Having the hunger ( the hunger= being hungry for more, to achieve, to build, to do meaningful work) 🌟 I mean that‘s how Steve Jobs took Pepsi‘s John Sculley by asking him Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or come with me and change the world? And then: In startups there is a lot of work and small teams, so you need people who aren’t afraid of taking work on and learning as they go.📖 Gut feeling. It‘s always right. And then grit, perseverance and dedication. You can always hire for skills, but your core team also needs to have belief and character. If the core team cracks you‘re done so loyalty above all.

Write a job descriptions. Someone with complimentary skills. Start with your personal network. Expand your search. Screen people based on a broad range of criteria. Identify ideal co-founder. Define your key business metrics. Craft your co-founder pitch.

Make sure you and your co-founders want things that are compatible. Be very honest about what each of you want from the startup. For example, do multiple founders want to be the CEO? Are all the founders building the company for the mission or for the money? Conflicting visions for the company and the founders can create large rifts over time