"Finding a complementary co-founder" advice is BULLSHIT 🤬
Here’s why 👇
We generally advise young entrepreneurs to build a complementary co-founding team based on skills.
But what we create instead is a mental barrier that says: "You cannot succeed if you don't have a complementary team." And that's TOTALLY false.
What I propose instead: build a team DEEPLY ALIGNED on personal values.
The entrepreneurial journey is long. You need people you can stick with for a long period of time. During that time, you'll have opportunities to learn new skills.
What's important is not which skills you have at the beginning, but which skills you're willing to learn and how fast you can learn.
What do you think is harder: learning sales or co-founding a company with an asshole with good sales skills?
Don't get me wrong!
Of course, it increases your odds of success if you have a complementary team AND you're aligned on personal values. But that's fucking rare.
So please remember that values alignment is always superior to the skillset of the team.
With my co-founder, Fabien, we are the perfect example that this advice is pure BS.
Same engineering school, same degree, same specialty.
Today?
One is doing sales, the other is doing marketing.
One is doing admin stuff, the other is doing design.
We even split technical responsibilities: one is doing back-end engineering, the other is doing front-end engineering.
I hope this post can help some of you break this mental barrier and start your entrepreneurial journey without desperately waiting for your complementary co-founder 🙏
#Startup #Entrepreneurship #Cofounder