The Co-Founder Covenant

Selected and adapted from Part 02 · 02-C · Do you want the same company?

Founders can work side by side while building toward different things. Start with what you want the company to be now.

1. What is the company for? What would make it worth what it costs you?
2. What kind of place do you want it to be to work?
3. How fast do you want it to grow?
4. Which of these hopes have you said aloud to your co-founders, and which have you only assumed they share?

If you choose to share: If you compare answers, listen for what is similar, different, or new to you. Nobody needs to argue for an answer today. A difference found is information.

Selected and adapted from Part 04 · 04-A · Titles and the actual load

A responsibility includes noticing, planning, doing, following up, and having a fallback. Looking at all five parts can reveal work a title leaves out.

1. What would someone assume you do, from your title?
2. Name a few things you actually carried this month, large or small.
3. For one of those responsibilities, which of the five parts do you hold? Which does someone else hold?
4. Is there something nobody asked you to take? How did it become yours?
5. Which responsibility would you hand over if you could?

If you choose to share: In the book, the next step is to set accounts beside one another. If you share a line, begin by describing what the responsibility involves in an ordinary week. The lists describe the work; they do not score the founders.

Selected and adapted from Part 10 · 10-A · The founders’ hour

Many founders meet constantly and seldom meet about the partnership. The book proposes one standing hour a month for how you work together, with one subject given your attention.

1. Would you want an hour like this? What would you want from it?
2. What would make you dread it?
3. When and where could it hold, even in a busy month?
4. What is one thing about how you work together that you would want to bring to that hour?

If you choose to share: You can bring the idea as a proposal. If each of you wants to try it, choose when and where, what stays outside the hour, and a date to look again. The hour is for the partnership; company operations are decided elsewhere.