How should a visionary bring on cofounders?
May 18, 2021
In this episode, we talk about how to get into partnerships if you are a visionary.
How do you know you picked the right co-founder? So I'm going to share a couple of stories about how I've launched startups with other co-founders and how they really didn't work out for me. One of them was Coinfeed, for example, where one of my co-founders, his sole job was to essentially raise money and try to gather interest for the business so I can focus on product development and building the community.
Well, most of this stuff was my vision. I was a visionary in this relationship and as the vision area, I felt that I was pulling in all the work and I was doing all the work while none of the other work was getting done by my co-founders. And I think this is usually typical of most visionaries, and especially for six percenter entrepreneurs who definitely pulled it away. When six percenter entrepreneurs get into a business relationship, they usually put in a lot more work than their co-founder. And this leads to a lot of frustration because now anytime you, as a six percenter entrepreneur, anytime you feel like you were doing work for the company, you were reminded that you were doing most of the work, but you're not getting most of the benefit, you're having to share your equity with all these different people, and it's not a good feeling.
So my philosophy is 100% equity. 100% equity means you are the boss, this means you have total control, there are no other investors, you have the final say, and this is how it's gonna be. So as a visionary, and with this concept of 100% equity, how do you work with other people? How do you get into partnerships? So this is what we're going to cover in this podcast episode and this podcast episode is actually inspired from the book Traction by Gino Whitman.
And in this book Traction, Gino kind of outlines how you structure a company, especially when you're first starting out in a way that can give you a lot of benefit towards the end. And what he emphasizes is focusing on the customer, I'm sorry, not the customer experience, he emphasizes focusing on the employee experience and the culture. And this is the role of the visionary, but then he introduces this other role of the integrator. So the integrator is the number two in your business.
While you manage the outside of the business, the integrator manages the inside and this really makes sense of sense to me because as the visionary, you don't want to look into the past, you want to always be looking at new ideas, looking at different ways to grow, always looking out into the future, but someone has to manage everything going on. So as visionaries, we usually like to start things and we like to create things and blow these things up. But there has to be someone at the other end, it's actually implementing everything and making sure that all the quote-unquote all the trains are running on time, right? And this is the job of the integrator.
So the integrator is this concept that Gino Whitman introduces that levels out the visionary in terms of growing this company and for me and my company, my Integrator is Ana and I've mentioned Ana a lot in previous episodes, but now that we've been reading this book, I have a better idea on how to set our duties or how to define our duties. So for Ana, she manages the inside, I managed the outside. Ana manages the finance, the HR the employee experience programs, all of this stuff. And then for me, I managed the vision, the culture, the customer experience, the sales teams, and anything that's customer-facing.
And this is how we have it split up and it's been a really good working relationship. But here's the thing, I still have 100% equity and the way that Ana and I work Ana works as her own entity. So essentially she has 100% equity of whatever she does as well because she is in this relationship as a freelancer. And this relationship where we have a visionary and an integrator is a really good combination for six percenter entrepreneurs who want to keep doing the vision and they're also able to execute, but they also just need a little bit of help in managing the house.
And in terms of managing the house, you could, I suppose find a co-founder and give them equity or you can keep 100% equity and just hire someone and hire them as a freelancer, so they keep 100% of their equity as well. So there's a concept of the visionary and the integrator. I am 100% positive that this is not the last time that I will be talking about this. As I'm going deeper into this book and as I'm implementing these exercises and these principles, I will share what I'm learning with all of you. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom. Bam, I'm out.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
Well, most of this stuff was my vision. I was a visionary in this relationship and as the vision area, I felt that I was pulling in all the work and I was doing all the work while none of the other work was getting done by my co-founders. And I think this is usually typical of most visionaries, and especially for six percenter entrepreneurs who definitely pulled it away. When six percenter entrepreneurs get into a business relationship, they usually put in a lot more work than their co-founder. And this leads to a lot of frustration because now anytime you, as a six percenter entrepreneur, anytime you feel like you were doing work for the company, you were reminded that you were doing most of the work, but you're not getting most of the benefit, you're having to share your equity with all these different people, and it's not a good feeling.
So my philosophy is 100% equity. 100% equity means you are the boss, this means you have total control, there are no other investors, you have the final say, and this is how it's gonna be. So as a visionary, and with this concept of 100% equity, how do you work with other people? How do you get into partnerships? So this is what we're going to cover in this podcast episode and this podcast episode is actually inspired from the book Traction by Gino Whitman.
And in this book Traction, Gino kind of outlines how you structure a company, especially when you're first starting out in a way that can give you a lot of benefit towards the end. And what he emphasizes is focusing on the customer, I'm sorry, not the customer experience, he emphasizes focusing on the employee experience and the culture. And this is the role of the visionary, but then he introduces this other role of the integrator. So the integrator is the number two in your business.
While you manage the outside of the business, the integrator manages the inside and this really makes sense of sense to me because as the visionary, you don't want to look into the past, you want to always be looking at new ideas, looking at different ways to grow, always looking out into the future, but someone has to manage everything going on. So as visionaries, we usually like to start things and we like to create things and blow these things up. But there has to be someone at the other end, it's actually implementing everything and making sure that all the quote-unquote all the trains are running on time, right? And this is the job of the integrator.
So the integrator is this concept that Gino Whitman introduces that levels out the visionary in terms of growing this company and for me and my company, my Integrator is Ana and I've mentioned Ana a lot in previous episodes, but now that we've been reading this book, I have a better idea on how to set our duties or how to define our duties. So for Ana, she manages the inside, I managed the outside. Ana manages the finance, the HR the employee experience programs, all of this stuff. And then for me, I managed the vision, the culture, the customer experience, the sales teams, and anything that's customer-facing.
And this is how we have it split up and it's been a really good working relationship. But here's the thing, I still have 100% equity and the way that Ana and I work Ana works as her own entity. So essentially she has 100% equity of whatever she does as well because she is in this relationship as a freelancer. And this relationship where we have a visionary and an integrator is a really good combination for six percenter entrepreneurs who want to keep doing the vision and they're also able to execute, but they also just need a little bit of help in managing the house.
And in terms of managing the house, you could, I suppose find a co-founder and give them equity or you can keep 100% equity and just hire someone and hire them as a freelancer, so they keep 100% of their equity as well. So there's a concept of the visionary and the integrator. I am 100% positive that this is not the last time that I will be talking about this. As I'm going deeper into this book and as I'm implementing these exercises and these principles, I will share what I'm learning with all of you. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom. Bam, I'm out.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
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