You're in a love affair.
Hey lovely reader, do you know why couples break up?
…Let me tell you: for the exact same reasons they fall in love.
😍 At first, it’s: “He’s such an amazing guitar player!”
👿 And it ends with: “I can’t stand all that noise anymore!”
😍 “She’s fascinating and ambitious, leading crazy new projects!”
👿 “How come she prioritizes her job over me?!?...”
😍 “He’s a gentle spirit with so many dreams!”
👿 “Why did I even listen to this fool?”
You get it. And guess what… It's the same for founding teams.
The same reasons why you first decided to team up with your cofounders are the reasons why you can end up hating them at some point.
Feel like I’m pushing the comparison between professional and personal too far?
We’re entrepreneurs. You know the lines can be blurry. Many of the founders I know are roommates who are together 90% of the time - meetings, never-ending phone conversations, pivoting, doubting, eating pasta, sharing beers.
And let me remind you that you’re reading a newsletter on tech entrepreneurship, from a company called “The Family”. The first time I entered a psychologist’s office, the therapist asked me: “Why that name for your company? Are you the mama with 4 husbands and 200+ kids?” I laughed defensively: “Nooooo... We’re just using the image of the family to add some warmth in a cold business world!”
Anyway…
Now that you know my cofounders better thanks to our daily emails, you can easily imagine what I’ve thought (only from time to time! 😁), over the past 8 years:
Nicolas?
❤️ “Finally, a deep-thinking intellectual writing about startups!”
🔥 and then “Can’t you get back to basics sometimes?”
Oussama?
❤️ “What an amazing speaker, provoking profound realizations!”
🔥 and then “Stop oversimplifying life with your fairy tales!”
Balthazar?
❤️ “What a smart advisor, pointing out the real strengths & weaknesses of startups!”
🔥 and then “Excuse me, but why has your brain replaced your heart?”
Mathias?
❤️ “The perfect combination between financing skills and humanity!”
🔥 and then “Can’t you just be light and breezy, like any other 20-something?”
As for me… let me guess 😁: “What a brave woman, aligning vision with execution!”
and then “Here we go again, the drama queen is about to act without knowing...”
Building a mission-driven company hurts - it’s violent, it’s exhausting, and you’ll want to throw your laptop in your cofounder’s face. As the years pass, you’ll change, they’ll change. You’ll think they’re changing for the worse; and as your own “features” expand, you can easily become a caricature of your younger self to them.
At The Family, we believe that ambition goes hand-in-hand with developing a strong founding team. You can’t build a game-changing company with a team made of people who do not enjoy spending time together over the long run. And now you understand my point: everything is reciprocal. Their marvellous qualities will become your nightmares, but the solidity of your team isn’t really about that.
The strength of your team is built through ACCEPTING & EMBRACING the fact that:
You’ll discover as many shining qualities as boring defaults in your cofounders;
There’s no genuine joy in avoiding the hard conversations;
There are no successes as a team if you don’t bring the lessons from your failures to the table.
Are you ready for it? Are you ready to talk about the real shit and work steadily on your relationships?
I feel like, accelerated by COVID, we’ve entered a “psychological era”: everyone realized the importance of mental health and taking responsibility in keeping up by trying to know themselves better. The introspection imposed by the lockdowns made us face our flaws and become more tolerant of all our light and dark sides. It’s just the beginning.
By the way, we’re hosting a “Be My Cofounder” event tomorrow!
If you’re looking for your next founding team, it’s for you - but only if you’re in the mood I’ve described in this letter 😉