Co-founder Communication – It Can Save Your Team

Paul Graham commented that one reason many startups fail is due to a soured cofounder relationship (see also “Startup Dirty Laundry”). From what I’ve seen, many of the latent problems faced by cofounders are based on miscommunication. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution – the daily standup meeting.

Here’s a common issue I saw while participating in DreamIt Ventures, an accelerator program in New York, NY.

Founder A (business) and Founder B (tech) are ending another hard week at ABC Startup. It’s Friday, and Founder A just finished a meeting with a potential client, who claims that they’ll signup if only ABC Startup provided X-feature.
Founder A now believes that the team should prioritize X-feature, which is Task #7. Founder A mentions this to Founder B on Friday, and there was no objection. Founder A believes there’s buy-in and agreement about prioritizing Task #7 above all else. Indeed, Founder A secretly hopes that Founder B will have a rough draft by Monday morning.
Now it’s Monday, and Founder B is working on Tasks #1-3. She diligently finishes each task according to an earlier plan, but never informs Founder A upon completing each task. Founder B believes she’ll get to Task #7 later, and dives into Tasks #4-6.
Wednesday rolls around, and Founder A is getting nervous. Closing the potential client will be a nice win for ABC Startup. Founder A casually asks Founder B, “Hey, what’s the status on Task #7?”
“I’ll get to it tomorrow,” Founder B calmly responds.
Founder A flips out, “What?! You haven’t even started? I thought we talked about this on Friday. Remember, I said it was a priority!”
“First, I don’t remember talking about it. Second, I definitely don’t remember discussing that Task #7 was a higher priority than Tasks #1-6.”
Resentment and defensive behavior ensue.

Left untreated, this pattern of miscommunication can destroy a team. The solution is simple; have a daily standup. It takes less than an hour. Here’s how:

Review: Each teammate discusses what they’ll accomplish that day, including any obstacles to achieve such tasks. [1]
Re-prioritize tasks based on achieving weekly or quarterly goals.
Reconvene before end of day to convey what was accomplished, and briefly discuss why or why not. [2]

Heed these Three Rs on a daily basis. Make it routine, right up there with grabbing coffee and checking HackerNews. It might save your team – and your startup.

[1] n.b. this is not the time to imagine what you’ll cover. Teammates should come prepared with a list of what they’ll discuss in advance of the daily standup.

[2] You can replace the “end of day” standup with a digital version from iDoneThis.com.