Together, In Profit and In Loss

One of the common challenges faced by entrepreneurs is that they cannot have all the required skills, and bandwidth to take off the startup alone. Of course, they can hire skilled employees and delegate duties to build the company but then again it requires money and more time. So what now? Getting the right co-founder. For first-time entrepreneurs, the decision of picking the right co-founder is often not appropriately considered. Find someone who complements your skills. We talk to three founders to know how their co-founders complement them.

DHRUV KOHLI Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer, Grabox

Harsh Bhagat and I are childhood friends. We did our schooling and sporting activities together. Kashish was our boss during our first job at ALDI. We formed a strong bond over the years and now we work together in a highly consultative way. We work through challenges and opportunities together. We all bring different skills to the table. This is important as everyone needs to have a key role and complement each other. This enables us to achieve a collective vision. We consider things together, assess them and if we agree to move forward, we implement. We have to act quickly but in a responsible way

MO HAMDOUNA Co-founder, Hatch Quarters and Mo Works

Why settle for one co-founder when you can have two? If you ask me, three heads are better than one, and we make a great team. Decisions need to be made fast and with two co-founders, you can have a tie-breaker. Ophelie Mouton was the perfect fit for the puzzle, covering business admin, HR to networking. On the other hand, Aiman Hamdouna’s skills in business development and financial planning proved to be the engine room in our growth. Together, we complement each other, covering the areas of what it takes that brought us to where we are today

RAJESH ARJUNLAL JAISINGH Co-founder and COO, WeInvest

Running any startup is like running a marathon. Certain values like trust and integrity are a given, but equally important is to decide what is crucial for the business and seeking those skills in your cofounders. As the business begins to scale, these skills will be important and one will need to complement each other. More often than not, getting a startup off the ground requires more administrative and regulatory work than one will expect, for which we need to have co-founders with skills across the spectrum from operations to marketing.

(This article appears in the June 2019 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here. You can buy our tablet version from Magzter.com. To visit our Archives, click here.)