1. Define Your Needs: Clearly outline the skills, experience, and personality traits you need in your co-founder. This could be someone with technical expertise, business experience, or specific industry knowledge. Ideally, co-founders should have different but complementary strengths, such as one being technical (engineer, product) and the other handling business (sales, operations, fundraising).
  2. Look in Your Existing Network: From our experience, the best co-founders are often people you already know and have worked with before, such as classmates, former colleagues, or friends with complementary skills.
  3. Join Communities with Talented People – Engage in communities where ambitious and skilled individuals gather, such as university entrepreneurship clubs, hackathons, startup hubs, and startup events.
  4. Use Co-Founder Matching Platforms – Kiuas runs its own Kiuas Co-Founder Matchmaking Platform, which connects people looking for co-founders mainly in the Nordics and Baltics. Another platform connecting co-founders globally: Y Combinator Co-founder Matching.
  5. Test Compatibility Before Committing – First, work on a small project together to see how well you collaborate under pressure, f.e. join a hackathon together. A trial period can help determine if you share the same work ethic, vision, and ability to handle disagreements.
  6. Align on Long-Term Vision – It’s crucial that co-founders share the same long-term goals for the startup, including risk tolerance, ambition level, and commitment.

One of the main reasons for co-founder breakups is founders not being in sync with their long-term vision due to their initial failure of setting up clear goals and expectations.

  1. Formalize the Relationship Early – When you find the right co-founder, set up clear agreements outlining roles, responsibilities, equity split, exit strategies, and decision-making early to avoid conflicts later. It is generally suggested a 50/50 split unless there's a very strong reason otherwise.
  2. Build Trust and Communication: We put a strong emphasis on open communication, trust, prior working relationships, and testing the partnership before making it official to increase the likelihood of a successful co-founder relationship.