Finding a co-founder isn’t always easy, but it was for me.
“Meeting” each other over Zoom
My co-founder, Brandan, and I went to grad school together. We were both completely remote during our first year of law school in 2020. We were in a few classes together, so I knew who he was but we never talked. My only recollection of him is seeing golf clubs in the background during a cold call and thinking “This is my kind of guy.”
Meeting each other in person and bonding over flag football
Brandan and I met in person during our second year when classes were back on campus. I can’t remember exactly when we met, but I think it was through an orientation event or a group project. Either way, we weren’t buddies by any stretch and I don’t think either of us would say that we hit it off. We barely knew each other.
Fast forward a few weeks and we join a law school flag football team together. (A team that would go on to win the UChicago grad school intramural championship.) A big reason for our success was our complementary skillsets. On offense, I would help the team move the ball with short gains and Brandan would be our go-to guy when we needed a long gain or a touchdown. On defense, I put constant pressure on the quarterback and Brandan broke up any and all downfield pass attempts.
We still weren’t exactly friends, but we were friendly. And we gained a mutual respect for each other as athletes.
Joining forces to test an entrepreneurial idea
It turned out we had complementary skills not just on the field, but off it too. Early in the football season, I heard about a program at our business school called The Polsky Customer Discovery Bootcamp. It was a program for students who had ideas and were serious about testing them. Really serious. Because the meetings would end at around 9:30 pm and there were assignments that required significant work. This was an “extracurricular” - it wasn’t a business school class, so it was only for people who were very serious about entrepreneurship. I had an idea coming into grad school - soccer cleats for former competitive players - that I wanted to seriously explore through the program.
I started pitching it to people I knew. I wrote up a description of the idea and my vision for the future. Brandan was the only person who expressed interest in doing the program with me.
Strengthening our partnership throughout business school
We completed the Customer Discovery Bootcamp and several entrepreneurial courses throughout our time at business school. While we started out seeking to validate the initial idea, we both had interest in pursuing entrepreneurship. As we talked to potential customers and did research on the footwear space, we both felt that the idea had legs. We thought it could be a successful business. So we kept working on the idea and doing what we could to bring our vision to life.
Going from classmates to co-founders
I’m not sure at what point we stopped thinking about each other as classmates in entrepreneurship classes together and started thinking about each other as co-founders. But it was a gradual process of investing more and more time and money into the venture and getting to know each other better and better.
The initial pitch to Brandan was never “do you want to be my co-founder?” It was “do you want to explore this idea with me?” We both have entrepreneurial spirits which I think is partly what brought us together.
If you’re interested in exploring an idea or finding a co-founder, I’d have two pieces of advice.
1) Don’t be afraid to ask. I was turned down by more than a few people. Brandan was the only person who was interested. That’s okay. I just needed one.
2) Don’t feel like you have to rush into a formal relationship. It’s okay to work together on smaller projects first before committing to a co-founder relationship. Not all people will be good matches as co-founders.
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