25 Questions I Ask Every Co-Founder Before Any Work Gets Done

I see founders obsessing over equity splits. Some people swear that 50/50 is bad—better do 51/49. But that's not what kills partnerships.

The real killer is expectation management over time. And it took me more than 10 years to learn this.

My venture studio works with non-technical partners. That's our entire model—we build the tech, they bring the audience and sales expertise. This means partnerships aren't optional for us; they're how we make money. And after a few painful lessons (including walking away from a SaaS business 10 years ago because I couldn't pay my rent from it), I developed a set of 25 questions that I now ask every partner before we write a single line of code.

These are the hard questions. Answering them honestly might show you exactly where a business will break in the future.

The Five Buckets

The questions fall into five categories:

Goals — The foundation. Why are we even doing this?
Current Status — Where does each partner actually stand in life?
From 0 to 1 — How do we get to the first dollar?
Extreme Examples — What happens when things go very wrong or very right?
The Worst Case — What if we end up hating each other?

Let me walk you through each one.

Goals

This is the easiest section, but don't skip it. You need to know what everyone wants—and more importantly, what they don't want.

1. How big should this thing become? What are our goals?

You'd be surprised how often partners have wildly different visions. One person wants a lifestyle business generating $10K/month. The other wants to build the next unicorn. These are incompatible goals, and you need to surface them early.

2. What would be the minimal goal to be content with it?

This reveals the exit point. If my freelance rate is $1,000/day, but this business only generates $1,000 after a week of part-time work, is that worth it? Knowing the minimum acceptable outcome tells you when someone might walk away.

3. What would be a hell-yeah goal?

Dream big, but keep it realistic. This should be the outcome that would make everyone genuinely excited.

4. What are the anti-goals?

What do we specifically want to avoid? In one of my partnerships, my anti-goal was that my partner shouldn't be bound too much to the business because we had other ventures running. I didn't want him to compromise his existing commitments.

Current Status

This is the hardest section. You need to understand where your partner actually is in life—not where they say they are.

5. Where does everyone stand in life, and where do they want to go? What motivates them?

My current partner is from a developing country; I'm from a developed one. We have different lifestyles and different personal goals. I invest the money; he invests the sweat equity. But our goal for the company is the same. You need this alignment.

6. Do you know the finances and commitments of everyone?

If your partner has a job that takes 10 hours a day and you don't know this, you're in trouble. If they're financially struggling and need a paycheck immediately, that changes everything. I learned this one the hard way—I left a SaaS business 10 years ago specifically because I needed to pay rent and the startup couldn't do that.

7. Do you know where everyone stands financially?

A broke co-founder will act radically different from a rich one. This isn't judgment; it's just reality. Someone with six months of runway makes different decisions than someone whose credit card is maxed out.

8. What's the partnership experience and history of each partner?

If your potential partner has had three businesses fail with different co-founders, you might want to talk to those old partners. And if someone has zero partnership experience, you need other signals that they're ethical and can stick with something when it gets hard.

9. Who is doing what? Where are the boundaries of each person?

I've seen 50/50 partnerships where both people assumed the other would do sales. Nobody did marketing. It was bound to fail.

In my venture studio, it's crystal clear: the non-tech co-founders do sales. We do tech. No ambiguity.

10. What are your personal boundaries?

I had a partner who used to ask me "Till, where are you?" I like being location-independent. Someone calling me and demanding I come back gave me a visceral reaction—I have a problem with authority, like most entrepreneurs. We dissolved that partnership about six months later.

My boundaries: If I put in more money and nothing comes back, that's a problem. If there's no monthly update with metrics, that's a problem. Write yours down.

11. Are there any hidden agendas?

Some people want a partnership because they feel lonely. If that's you, join a community instead. I'm part of the Dynamite Circle—that's my remedy for loneliness. Loneliness shouldn't be why you're searching for a business partner.

Here's how to surface hidden agendas: List all the reasons you want to do this business, prioritized from most to least important. Then flip the list and answer from the bottom up. Be vulnerable. Be honest.

My honest answers included: "Deep down, I feel like I need to prove myself as an entrepreneur. I have imposter syndrome. If I can make this happen, it would feel like a win." I put that down. My partner rated my honesty 10/10.

12. Are we doing this for profit, or for personal reasons we don't want to admit?

I lived in Berlin. I saw a lot of people who wanted to "change the world." They built fancy startups. They were basically playing startup. The basic KPI—the metric that determines if a business is successful—is profit. Without profit, it's not a viable business.

13. Is there a substitute for this partner? Could you just hire this out?

Because if you could hire it out, maybe you should. Someone you hire, you can also fire. A partner? That's much harder.

From 0 to 1

A French friend of mine who runs several companies locally once told me: "Once money comes in, everything is easy. Every partnership is easy. Just distribute the money and grow it."

The hard part is getting to that first dollar.

14. How will we get to the first 20/50/100 users? Have we done enough market research?

What's the marketing plan? If there's dissonance here—one person thinks it'll grow organically while the other assumes their partner is doing sales—that will explode.

15. Does every partner fully buy in and believe in the plan?

Not just agree. Believe.

16. How do we communicate, meet, and update each other?

Do we need to see each other in person? How often? What's the communication rhythm?

17. What resources are the co-founders putting in? How much time?

Be specific. Hours per week. Write it down.

18. How do we handle risk?

This needs to be explicit.

19. How do we handle expenses?

I really dislike when one partner exploits the company with costs that benefit them personally. A friend of mine discovered his co-founder had a huge private office billed as a company expense. He didn't even know about it.

In some of my partnerships, we do revenue shares where I cover all costs. This means I can upgrade services or hire better engineers without asking permission. But some businesses can't work that way—you need to distribute profits instead. Figure out which you are.

Extreme Examples

You need to know where the breaking points are—both for failure and success.

20. What do we do if it takes longer than expected?

21. What do we do if it's much more expensive than planned?

I learned this one personally. I partnered with a marketing expert to build a SaaS in the hiring space. We agreed on $3,000 total spend each. Super low, but we thought it was reasonable. My team produced more cost than expected, and suddenly I was at $10,000. The gap that needed to be paid to get back to 50/50 is what broke the partnership.

If we'd written down "only $3,000 per person, hard cap," I would have cut scope aggressively. We didn't have that written contract. My failure.

22. What if someone just stops working?

Can you hire this out? Is the business still viable? In my venture studio model, if the non-tech founder with the audience stops working, that's usually fatal for the business. It hasn't happened yet, but it's a known risk that needs to be written down.

23. What if a co-founder exits (even amicably)—could this still survive?

I had an early partnership with a software agency in Germany. I wanted to exit. I offered to waive my salary, wind things down gracefully. Did it survive? No. My partner closed the company instead of running it alone.

That told me something important: his reason to run that company was tied to me being there. He was in it for personal reasons, probably. If we'd asked these questions back then, we would have known.

24. What if it explodes and needs a lot of attention? Under what circumstances would we go "all in"?

Can you be there for the business as it grows? What's the plan if success comes faster than expected?

When we went through these questions with my current partner, we discovered he doesn't want to sell. That's important information for me—this will be a lifestyle business, not a big exit windfall. It only gets sold if there's a massive offer.

The Worst Case

25. What if someone wants to leave? What's the protocol?

Figure this out before anyone wants to leave.

26. Who holds what leverage?

If it's not bad enough to call lawyers, but something is happening—what's the worst that could happen if one person acts maliciously?

If someone owns the domain and wants to cause damage, they could point it elsewhere and destroy the business. If the technical partner has all the code access and the non-tech partner has zero visibility into development, that's massive leverage.

We've always been ethical about this—we give partners access to code and developers. But you should know what the maximum damage could be if things went sideways.

27. What if we start to hate each other? Would this still run?

This question comes from Alex Hormozi. He says a business partnership needs to work even if the partners hate each other. Because if the business still runs when you can't stand each other, it's probably good business.

Hate is a strong word. But it's the right question.

How to Use These Questions

Take this list. Copy all the questions. Have each partner write their answers independently, then compare.

The goal isn't to pass or fail. The goal is to surface the disconnects before you're three months into building something and realize you have fundamentally different expectations.

These questions have saved me from bad partnerships and strengthened good ones. They forced me to be honest about my own hidden agendas—my imposter syndrome, my need to prove myself, my boundaries around autonomy.

The best partnerships I've seen aren't the ones where people agreed on everything. They're the ones where people disagreed on things and talked about it before it mattered.

The Full List

Goals

How big should this thing become? What are our goals?
What would be the minimal goal to be content with it?
What would be a hell-yeah goal?
What are the anti-goals?

Current Status

Where does everyone stand in life, and where do they want to go? What motivates them?
Do you know the finances and commitments of everyone?
Do you know where everyone stands financially? (A broke co-founder acts radically different from a wealthy one)
What's the partnership experience and history of each partner?
Who is doing what? Where are the boundaries of each person?
What are your personal boundaries?
Are there any hidden agendas?
Are we doing this for profit, or for personal reasons we don't want to admit?
Is there a substitute for this partner? Could you just hire this out?

From 0 to 1

How will we get to the first 20/50/100 users? Have we done enough market research?
Does every partner fully buy in and believe in the plan?
How do we communicate, meet, and update each other?
What resources are the co-founders putting in? How much time?
How do we handle risk?
How do we handle expenses?

Extreme Examples

What do we do if it takes longer than expected?
What do we do if it's much more expensive than planned?
What if someone just stops working?
What if a co-founder exits (even amicably)—could this still survive?
What if it explodes and needs a lot of attention? Under what circumstances would we go "all in"?

The Worst Case

What if someone wants to leave? What's the protocol?
Who holds what leverage?
What if we start to hate each other? Would this still run?