In a start-up, there is a 0% chance that you will always agree or get along with your co-founders (no matter how awesome indeed your co-founders are!). That's not necessarily a bad thing.
When this happens, what do you do? While this is hardly a start-up specific problem, I think that when you are arguing over your "baby", things just have the potential to get that much more "heated". After all, unlike employees in a firm, you and your co-founders are all extremely invested in every marketing decision, strategic move and technical choice that you make.
People say that picking your co-founders and defining roles can help circumvent some of these issues. While, I agree that selecting your co-founders is a crucially important decision, I sincerely doubt that it cuts back on the arguments... the good ones that is. A certain amount of heated debate can be very healthy. After all, you didn't select co-founders that would blindly agree with you all the time. In my opinion, if you don't argue you probably don't care that much to begin with. Adding new view points to a discussion can help you discover whole new strategies. What's important is the ability to listen and take-in other people's thoughts and the potential to change your mind when warranted.
At Kabuk, we tend to have a few spectacular fights every few months or so. We yell, talk loudly over each other and vigorously defend our own views. Can these incidents be stressful and emotional? Yes, but I think we are better off for them. These "incidents" typically blow over in a day. We fight things out, get everything on the table, and miraculously come-up with some middle ground (not right away of course... sometimes we need some downtime in between to let things sink in). Luckily, the three of us handle arguments in a fairly similar way. That is, we can get really angry, but we don't take anything personally and we don't hold grudges (and that's a very good thing).
Sadly, my arguments against us all taking a sparring class for team-building have so far been ignored.
Is it ok to get mad at your co-workers and think that they are a bit (or a lot crazy)? Perfectly normal! The way that we are set up at Kabuk, two of us are extremely technically/functionally oriented, and the third design/user-experience obsessed. Do we sometimes want to strangle him when he is pushing all this pedantic formatting, and user messaging talk in the middle of a big release when - to be completely honest - all we are really concerned about is fixing functional issues? No comment. Does his input make Kabuk a better product for users? 100% - having a less technical co-founder helps us uncover usability issues that wouldn't occur to us in a million years. Striking the right balance between form and functionality is a big deal!
Every start-up handles these issues differently. What do YOU do when your co-founders and you disagree? How do you "fight" or not?
When this happens, what do you do? While this is hardly a start-up specific problem, I think that when you are arguing over your "baby", things just have the potential to get that much more "heated". After all, unlike employees in a firm, you and your co-founders are all extremely invested in every marketing decision, strategic move and technical choice that you make.People say that picking your co-founders and defining roles can help circumvent some of these issues. While, I agree that selecting your co-founders is a crucially important decision, I sincerely doubt that it cuts back on the arguments... the good ones that is. A certain amount of heated debate can be very healthy. After all, you didn't select co-founders that would blindly agree with you all the time. In my opinion, if you don't argue you probably don't care that much to begin with. Adding new view points to a discussion can help you discover whole new strategies. What's important is the ability to listen and take-in other people's thoughts and the potential to change your mind when warranted.
At Kabuk, we tend to have a few spectacular fights every few months or so. We yell, talk loudly over each other and vigorously defend our own views. Can these incidents be stressful and emotional? Yes, but I think we are better off for them. These "incidents" typically blow over in a day. We fight things out, get everything on the table, and miraculously come-up with some middle ground (not right away of course... sometimes we need some downtime in between to let things sink in). Luckily, the three of us handle arguments in a fairly similar way. That is, we can get really angry, but we don't take anything personally and we don't hold grudges (and that's a very good thing).Sadly, my arguments against us all taking a sparring class for team-building have so far been ignored.
Is it ok to get mad at your co-workers and think that they are a bit (or a lot crazy)? Perfectly normal! The way that we are set up at Kabuk, two of us are extremely technically/functionally oriented, and the third design/user-experience obsessed. Do we sometimes want to strangle him when he is pushing all this pedantic formatting, and user messaging talk in the middle of a big release when - to be completely honest - all we are really concerned about is fixing functional issues? No comment. Does his input make Kabuk a better product for users? 100% - having a less technical co-founder helps us uncover usability issues that wouldn't occur to us in a million years. Striking the right balance between form and functionality is a big deal!
Every start-up handles these issues differently. What do YOU do when your co-founders and you disagree? How do you "fight" or not?
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