EP5: Vetting Cofounders: Why Swiping Right Isn’t Enough

Episode 5: Vetting Cofounders

Zach Oshinbanjo: This is the founder problems podcast. And today we’re going to be talking about vetting co founders. we’re going to talk about our own personal experiences and perspectives and how we approach this topic.

I’m going to go ahead first. I’ll say that I’m looking at it from the perspective of how we can be so concentrated on the end goal that we ignore. All the things that actually matter when you’re trying to complete a project or work on a business with someone.

Lee Zuvanich: I think it’s pretty straightforward. Vetting co founders is an obvious thing that you should do before you get into bed with someone and have basically a marriage with them in a professional sense. I assumed that everybody checked references and did digging, you know, go deep into someone’s history ask around ask your community formal and informal kind of background checking And it turns out people don’t do that.

Maybe that is why I’ve never had a co founder. [00:01:00] Laughter 

Sarah Schumacher: That’s a great point actually. Why do we have employees submit references and call them hopefully and yet so often co founders or people in leadership for startups is somebody you met at a networking event and you clicked.

And then you got coffee, and you’re like, Oh yeah, this is great, let’s do this! And then next thing you know, you’re signing an operating agreement. There’s less due diligence, and there should not be less due diligence. I’m approaching this as someone who did not do due diligence.

Which is why I think about this a lot, because I have a whole list of things that I’ve been thinking about over the last several years. How can you prevent other people from making mistakes. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about. 

Lee Zuvanich: Like I said, I’ve never had a co founder, so my perspective may be a little more black and white than someone who’s gone through it and dealt with the mess, like giving marriage advice to someone who’s never been married. I have been married, though. And I know that you do not take it lightly, and just like that, I do not take bringing a co founder into my life lightly, because honestly, it seems just as intense to me.

 I don’t want to [00:02:00] diminish the importance of an actual marriage but when you spend eight to ten plus hours a day, five days a week or more on a startup with someone sitting across the table from you, that can be even more intense than the person you go home to sometimes. So, I mean, I’ve come close.

I invested in a startup that I was a C level executive at and some people would call that being a co founder. But I got into that very carefully. So I guess one method that I would recommend would be the method I took in that instance, which is just starting as a contractor. I was an operational consultant.

 Still kept my full time job for a very long time. I think it was at least six to eight months, maybe longer, of weekend and evening work as an operational consultant coming in. Turns out I picked up all the product work, the CTO work, the financial work. And became very valuable to this startup before they got fully funded.

And then once they got their [00:03:00] funding, they were able to make me offer to be the COO. So I was able to finally, over time, look into the founder’s background, get to know what their working style was, see them during stressful moments, go through all of this together. before I took the big leap to actually invest it and quit my job.

But before I did that, I saved a lot of money, my backup plan was, of course, to go back to tech in a different capacity, and I also had my own business running on the side, so I had a lot of safety nets in place. I’m a single parent, so it wasn’t a decision I made lightly. And maybe that is one of the reasons I am so careful. I met someone recently and she said she found her co founder on Y Combinator’s matching app. I think it’s tough to use. Yeah. And so they, she’s interviewed lots of people. In fact, that’s how we met. I was checking it out a little bit and we became friends.

And she told me recently that she met a guy on there and they talked for like six hours, eight hours straight, something like that. And then he became her co [00:04:00] founder. Which. Sounds cool, and it’s going well so far, but I hope she also did some due diligence. I’m in favor of the six months of working together before you even get into bed on anything with equity. 

Get hired as a contractor or hire them as a contractor and try it out. I do the same thing with anyone at an executive level for my business too, we do a trial working relationship. 

Sarah Schumacher: Yeah, that’s a great point, actually, because I do the same thing with contractors. Let’s start just doing a few projects and see how it goes.

But we don’t do that either with co founder stuff. It’s just like all or nothing. 

Zach Oshinbanjo: From your perspective then, since you’ve made the analogy of it being like a marriage, how do you manage the trust factor? Because obviously in a marriage or friendship, it develops But if times of the essence, how do you accelerate trust?

Lee Zuvanich: Why would you do that [00:05:00] That’s like dating, right? Why would you accelerate trust in a dating relationship?

Zach Oshinbanjo: Because you’re supposed to move fast and break things. 

Lee Zuvanich: Well, you’re going to break some shit for sure. So you’re asking how I’m asking why. What do you think, Sarah? 

Sarah Schumacher: You don’t have a timeline on it. I wouldn’t think you’d have a timeline, like a dating relationship. It’s just progressing the rate it’s going to progress and it is what it is. But if you’re looking at a co founder, it’s because you need something. It’s because you have some sort of a goal. I need this skill that I don’t have.

And I need this person to bring it to the table. Then there’s usually timelines. Maybe you’re trying to get funding. Maybe you’re getting a grant or whatever. So, you do need to, I don’t want to say accelerate, but I think there needs to be more transparency. It just needs to be more intentional.

You know what I mean? Because trust is built over time, based on patterns of behavior. And you don’t have the time to pick up on the patterns. Cause that was the issue with the business that I was in that particular partnership. It took a couple years of seeing the patterns before I was like, [00:06:00] oh, okay, but if there had been more of a process ahead of time, I don’t, I mean, that’s difficult to know if that would have worked.

But yeah, it’s how do you see the patterns more quickly? 

Lee Zuvanich: I think if you need to, you can both Go through stressors together organically, but also manufacture that to some degree like negotiating.

Sarah Schumacher: So like an escape room? Sorry.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s actually not a bad idea.

Sarah Schumacher: Sorry, that sounds like my hell.

Lee Zuvanich: People do those for culture building, right? And for trust building exercises for a reason. But normally when I’m entering into something that might be a partnership of some kind. We go get a drink together. We learn about each other’s families, our worldviews, it’s basic networking.

Anyone I think I might want to work with on any level. Let’s get to know each other over drinks or whatever your preference there is to relax. Go on a hike. Something where you can get out of your formal element and socialize and be like, oh you believe that.

That thing [00:07:00] about raising children, you’re a psychopath. You want to know who they really are deep down because you don’t want to find out six or twelve months in that doing something that ethically you could never support. There are those basic considerations, right? 

Sarah Schumacher: So you’re saying develop a personal , friendship type of, building a relationship with anyone.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s what I do, yeah. 

Sarah Schumacher: It’s not a technical vetting and it’s not a business vetting. Yeah, I can go find a developer anywhere. Who are you as a person, yeah. Yeah, 

Lee Zuvanich: I can hire someone, anyone. I can hire on fire and I don’t care how they celebrate holidays or raise their children or who they vote for.

But if this is a person that I’m gonna expect to get out of bed with me at 2 a. m. Because the server crashed and our biggest client is freaking out and we just launched like we need to be able to be on The same page about a lot of things. This business comes ahead of the fact that I promised my kids I’d be in there at their game tomorrow.

Does it or does it not? Are you now a bad parent for being a good co founder? It gets messy. [00:08:00] It gets personal you get in each other’s lives. The people I’ve worked with the longest I know their spouses. I know their kids like We do stuff together outside of work, and I like that. And we have the same worldview.

We accept technical projects that we believe in, and we donate time to those projects because we believe in the social good that they’re doing. So, I’ve got a kind of a messy ethical lens on how I create things, because any developers can create anything. I could just go to Upwork and hire some random people.

I just want to build, build shit and not care about it. Yeah. But I want to care about the work I do and I want to have the same belief systems as the people I work alongside because, when Roe v. Wade was repealed, for instance, a lot of people, this is when we were all coming into the office, several people that worked for me were coming up to me like tearful and saying they were worried about their rights and what was going to happen to them and, we made space for that.

And I would not want to build a company just to have some event happen and realize , there’s [00:09:00] infighting and tension around what some people consider to be basic worldviews, like table stakes. 

Sarah Schumacher: But then that actually happened, at a business in town a few years ago where there was a co founder that his beliefs were antithetical to the other co founders.

And it was a little bit of a mess because I don’t think that they knew. I don’t think anybody knew. So then Their supporters were like, what the heck, man? That even hurt the business. 

Lee Zuvanich: We see founders doing that a lot right now like deciding to be public with their political beliefs. I sure hope their investors and co founders were down for that 

Sarah Schumacher: Even just the concept of is this okay to share this at all exactly?

Don’t weigh in on crap, right? There’s certain people’s if you just kept your mouth shut like Dilbert guy, Scott Adams, dude, you could be raking in the dough, if you just kept your mouth shut. You’re a cartoonist. 

Lee Zuvanich: I know. He’s such an idiot.

Sarah Schumacher: Seriously, same with J. K. Rowling. You guys could just be making so much money living your best lives if you just stop talking. Anyway, so the piece I hear you saying there’s like the integrity thing, which to me is the number one as well. If I’m looking at a list of criteria, the number one thing is integrity.

Is this person who they say they [00:10:00] are? And then is that the kind of person that takes away people’s rights because they disagree with them, or, there’s a whole thing that you can look at with the integrity piece.

Lee Zuvanich: I wouldn’t go so far as to say, if they don’t vote the same way that I do, I won’t work with them.

That’s not what I’m saying. 

Sarah Schumacher: Right, it’s the world view, I think.

Lee Zuvanich: How do you manage that? Within your world professionally and personally, and yeah, am I gonna wake up and find out you went on a podcast without me and said some crazy shit, and now we’ve alienated half of our users.

Sarah Schumacher: That’s interesting, because that’s not actually an angle I had thought about at all. My specific, approach is from a business angle, from an expertise angle. The integrity piece, I still think is the most important. What is your motivation for doing a thing? 

Is it money? Is it because you want the recognition because you’ve got an ego problem because that’s going to affect everything. Is it just because you really want to make stuff or you want to improve your skillset or you enjoy the challenge, the intrinsic value.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s more just as important not more important. But what I described is like to me. It’s level zero. Do I like you? 

Sarah Schumacher: Yep, 

Lee Zuvanich: Are [00:11:00] we gonna have a big fight and then be able to work through it because you’re a good communicator and you’re respectful And we hate each other right now, but we’re gonna work it out 

Zach Oshinbanjo: that basic sort of a friend thing Yes, you want to be able to be friends?

Answer my own question. founder be a friend with that person and then it developed and blossom into something

Lee Zuvanich: yeah. Left right. I don’t personally make a lot of friends that are good at business. . Yeah. Present company excluded.

I make friends with a lot of artists, so I would be wary if I was their friend first.

Are we putting rose colored glasses on and thinking this is going to be great? 

Sarah Schumacher: that’s a self awareness thing. If you know that, then you can look for that. But if you’re not aware of your patterns, if you only hang out with people who are terrible with money, maybe don’t hire them as a CFO.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, maybe don’t pull one into your business. 

Zach Oshinbanjo: You met them all at MLM rallies. Exactly. Tupperware parties. 

Lee Zuvanich: Well, yeah, or if your best friend is like, I can’t pay my bills, do not say, oh, well, what if we Did this thing together.

Zach Oshinbanjo: I’ve been working on something. 

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. 

Sarah Schumacher: Do not hire previous cult members as your salespeople.

Zach Oshinbanjo: They could be persuasive. [00:12:00] 

Sarah Schumacher: They could be persuasive in a different direction. What not to do? Yeah, okay. 

Zach Oshinbanjo: That kind of segues over to you, Sarah. 

Sarah Schumacher: Yeah, oh my gosh. I have so many thoughts about this because I’ve just been thinking about this for so long. So, as we’ve been talking about this I have a whole list of things that will be written up and put on the website.

For a checklist here are the things to look at. Because the problem is we get so zoned in on the goal we get so excited about the idea. I gotta do this thing. I gotta get this person. We just go and we don’t do any of the due diligence Because we’re just so caught up in the thing and if you had something like a checklist without this positivity bias of This person that I just got introduced to seems really cool and we connected well.

You can do that with anybody. People that are narcissists and fake stuff are really good at that, actually. And that’s the thing I don’t think most of us normal people think about. Because when you just sort of, approach the world from a place of I want to build cool stuff and help people, you’re not thinking about, you don’t expect, [00:13:00] yeah, yeah, you don’t think about those things and you also just don’t expect people to come from a place of being disingenuous, you know oh, I’m, I’m excited to build this and they hear, I can get famous or I can make money.

Lee Zuvanich: You got money? You just got funded? 

Sarah Schumacher: Yeah. You’re excited about a different thing. So I think the motivation piece is really important to understand and figuring out when you meet people, do they have integrity? Is that Something that they display, not that they say. What is their motivation for it?

Does it match what yours is? Those are really big things. But then also expertise is really important. And that’s where I would think that a good approach would be to have a mentor. A peer and a mentee of someone be someone that you interview. Okay, give me your references.

If I’m hiring someone to manage people, I don’t just want to talk to other managers you’ve worked with, I want to talk to people that you’ve managed, get some outside perspective on did they do this well? What do they not say?

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, I’ve always gotten the best information from people they did not tell me to talk to. 

That would be the ideal, obviously. mutuals. Yeah, sometimes that’s hard to do. Yeah, LinkedIn, that’s a good way. Or just see where they worked [00:14:00] before, and then can I find someone from that department or something?

Yeah, I’ve avoided some serious problems by looking at my LinkedIn mutuals and reaching out to friends and being like, hey, it looks like you know this person. And then if I call the references they give me, glowing references. I talk to our mutual friends and they’re like, oh my god, let me tell you a story about this person.

Sarah Schumacher: That’s a great reason to build your network. Because if you aren’t connected to your local community and your network of other business owners and people in your industry, you’re not going to have those people to call.

Right? So that’s a really good reason for not just finding new business you have people to call and be like, Hey, do you know so and so? I said that to you today. I was like, Hey, you heard of this guy?

That’s how all the information gets passed around. So yeah, talk to people in the network then. If they’ve been in business with other people, have they had other businesses and what are the states of those other businesses, especially if they’ve had co founders.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. 

Sarah Schumacher: I would look at that too. 

I’m so cynical now. People selling courses, I make a million dollars. Yeah, off of selling people courses.

What are you doing? 

Zach Oshinbanjo: Primary vehicle. 

Sarah Schumacher: Yeah. What did you actually do? Where’s the proof here? 

Lee Zuvanich: That’s my favorite bullshit thing right now. It’s like, let me sell you a course on how I’m a millionaire. [00:15:00] How are you a millionaire? Well, I sell courses. 

Sarah Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. is your course on how to sell courses?

Lee Zuvanich: It actually it is. 

Sarah Schumacher: So for expertise, how do you vet that? Don’t assume people actually know what they’re talking about. Yeah. Start there. Okay. We were talking about the conversation you had with someone where you were giving them a high level overview and they came right back with Oh yeah, this, this, and this.
 

 When you have conversations with people with deep expertise, you could pick up on that. There’s this ability to repeat back things in different ways, that shows that they understand it. So I think that’s really helpful, but I think you still have to follow that up with okay, show me some examples. What have you built? 

Zach Oshinbanjo: A little bit to your point earlier if you’re going for references, obviously somebody is always going to find the most glowing reveal. You’re always going to get a stellar report. 

But I think you can liken that to Yelp or whatever. They say that the angriest people use Yelp and the happiest people are on Google. I really love this place. And you’re like, Let me go to Yelp. See who didn’t like it. 

Lee Zuvanich: So what other approaches do you use? 

Zach Oshinbanjo: I don’t know. I’m probably not the best example of this because in all [00:16:00] other aspects of my life. I find myself to be like a natural skeptic. I hate how this has been over absorbed by society, but if I feel like there’s a energy shift and things are just synced up, we have synergy, then I might 

Lee Zuvanich: Put that on your checklist.

Synergy. 

Zach Oshinbanjo: I think I’m already kind of drawn to that, cause everyone has a, generally positive reception to good energy. Hey, this is what I’m working on, and somebody can bounce back and say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you’re like, blah, blah, blah.

So you’re having that conversation, you’re like. Okay. I think, I think they get it. 

Sarah Schumacher: Yeah. 

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. Which is so nice when you’re a lonely founder, right? It’s attractive. You got to watch out for that. Oh my God, someone finally let me nerd out. Didn’t stop me in the middle to be like, honey, that’s enough it makes it really hard to then turn them down. Right. 

Zach Oshinbanjo: It does. That’s probably the biggest issue. I don’t know if there’s a true way to do it. I think a lot of it is, [00:17:00] A leap of faith essentially you have to have an idea you have to put it out there because that’s one of those old ideas that I had is that If you tell somebody your stuff they’re gonna take it.

It was like no take it man. Yeah, it’s a nice Executors 

Sarah Schumacher: are so that there’s expectations there too that I think’s important so you say it’s like a leap of faith And I think that’s true, but also, you need to have some accountability about what that leap of faith entails.

An important piece of this is setting out specific, expectations for what are you going to do on what timeline are you going to do it? Because the problem with so many of these things is those things aren’t defined. Then there can be like this, Ah, I feel like I’m doing 99 percent of the work.

You know what I mean? But you can’t look at a thing and say, Oh, I am in fact. Whereas if you have that stuff drawn out, then you can be like, Oh no, I’m clearly doing 99 percent of the work. This is not what we agreed to. And then there’s some accountability there. Okay, now how do Does this person react to that?

So you can take a leap of faith, but you can take a leap of faith with some insurance [00:18:00] in the form of an operating agreement that states, some of these things. That is probably the number one biggest regret that I have of not clearly defining the roles, what those roles specifically entailed, what execution would be done on what timeline, number of hours, you can do amounts of money if it’s partnerships, that kind of thing.

 Having that stuff written down agreed to and signed by everyone so that if there is some sort of conflict you can pull up and be like look at this. 

Lee Zuvanich: I always put it in writing always plan for the end always plan for things to not go Well, how will you exit? And you do that when you’re friendly and you’re excited and then it’s there and it’s available if you need it Hopefully you won’t 

Sarah Schumacher: We did that there was an operating agreement. All that stuff was discussed?

We did all of that, right? The problem was it left out some key ingredients so you can do that 

Lee Zuvanich: what were those 

Sarah Schumacher: the 

accountability specifically around specific roles and tasks. The basic vetting of Personal integrity and alignment in terms of motivation.

That’s a big one that’s more ephemeral. Because there’s also the business vision too. And that was a thing that we did well. We talked through what’s the [00:19:00] end goal on this vision. But if you don’t establish someone’s integrity, it doesn’t really matter what they tell you on everything else because they could just be lying to you.

Lee Zuvanich: Right. 

Sarah Schumacher: That’s why that’s the number one for me. 

Lee Zuvanich: It totally is. Because if you write down, you do everything right. And you write down those goals and roles and OKRs and KPIs and you have a project management system and you’re like, look, I did. 60 percent of the work and you did 40, but you got paid more or whatever if they don’t give a shit 

And they don’t care about you And they don’t really care if they burn this to the ground and take you with it Then you have a much bigger problem, and I’m not speaking from personal experience.

I feel like I’ve been pretty lucky Overall with the people that I’ve worked with in different very partnerly capacities, although I’ve never put anyone on my LLC , or S or corporation paperwork. I’ve been on other people’s things and I’ve had, C level partners. We’ve always been able to amicably untangle at the end, but, that might be in part because I do everything you’re talking about, I’m an operational person.

So we always have a project management platform that [00:20:00] accounts for all the work. And I am extremely. Jealous of my own time, on behalf of my children. So you’re not gonna take an hour from me unless I’m willing to give it. I don’t care if it’s volunteer or not. I’m here because I want to be, ’cause it’s important and it’s valuable.

But if you’re gonna say, Hey, can you stay late to debug this shit and run qa? ’cause our QA person had to take off early for their anniversary. That’s really not my problem.

I came in as the COO, for a startup and was there for two and a half years and we had this understanding from day one that I was taking a pay cut in exchange for the opportunity to take this equity to maybe see it blow up and have that equity become very valuable and then maybe I would get a raise, whatever. So I took a below market value salary and then if I went above a certain number of hours, basically if I worked any overtime, then I got an hourly rate.

And we engineered that from day one because I knew that at some point I’d be asked to do something crazy like work around [00:21:00] the clock on a launch during COVID while having COVID, which is what happened. And I would want to be able to say to my kids and to myself, this is worth it because at least this helps me pay for your education or something, I’m not just doing it because I got suckered into it again because my partner here is really good at talking me into things.

So yeah, having all that written down, all those little criteria, like what your time is worth when it comes down to it, and you’re both arguing about who’s gonna have to apologize to their family tonight and stay up all night to work on something. And negotiating those things is a stressor. So I find that to be a really good organic point of stress. 

Sarah Schumacher: That’s a great point. Alright, well, there you go. If you want to invent a situation, let’s see who you really are. Let’s talk about money. 

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. 

Yeah, have a glass of wine and sit down and Have a nice dinner and talk about your family and then ease into the money thing about hour two when you’re like, all right Let’s start writing this shit down and everyone’s sweating.

You start to see who they really are 

Zach Oshinbanjo: It’s easy to really diffuse a potential partnership. You just throw it out there. In job interviews or negotiations of like, oh this job seems good. Ah, [00:22:00] what the hell? How much does it pay? And if they’re like, uh, uh, uh, they start doing like 

Sarah Schumacher: Well, how much do you want?

Zach Oshinbanjo: And if we’re doing the tango on it, I’m like This has been great. Great for me. Cause that is probably telling in its own way. And I think removing that discomfort, that’s the number one thing that ends marriages and people’s interpersonal relationships is money.

Especially in the interview world, not to go on a tangent, but it becomes this interview, interview, interview. When we get to interview two, how much is it pay? You say something crazy, you don’t want to tell me, all right, thanks. Then, that ends their, opportunity for me to be an employee there.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s such a great way to approach it, I think, with a co founder, too. if they’re going to clam up and get weird about it, all right, we’re done here. 

Sarah Schumacher: Yeah, 

Zach Oshinbanjo: there’s no further conversation necessary.

I can dive into my perspective on this. I think it’s, getting these rose colored glasses where you become so infatuated with the idea or the goal of what you’re trying to accomplish that you [00:23:00] ignore any of the criteria that actually matters.

 You could meet somebody and they’re like, Wow, this, this person is great. Or they like a a good scotch or something like that. It’s irrelevant to the practice. 

Lee Zuvanich: I’m also a scotch guy. 

Zach Oshinbanjo: That’s 

it. Let’s go sign this right now. Go down to the secretary of state and get the paperwork. But that’s irrelevant to the idea of actually getting work done.

And I think sometimes maybe I can over optimistically or have positivity bias or something like that where I’m like, okay, somebody gets it. They have a golden doodle, I’m thinking about getting a golden doodle.

Sarah Schumacher: Do we just become best friends?

Lee Zuvanich: These are really specific examples.

Zach Oshinbanjo: So wrapped up in this idea of all these things that are like, I don’t know if the person can do the job or not, but we could be unhappy together as we work on it.

So you go through this process over and over, and I think that’s the bigger difficulty that I have. Can they do it? And can I really assess can they do it? And not base it on all these irrelevant factors. One [00:24:00] of the easiest things is some people always try to say this, Previous performance is not if indicative of future potential or whatever it may be.

Lee Zuvanich: It is.

I thought the saying was past performance does indicate future behavior. 

No, 

I’ve heard it as the opposite, but you’re right. 

Sarah Schumacher: It depends on the context. They’re probably using that in the context of an employee or something, you know, because, yeah, I mean,

Lee Zuvanich: I’ve only heard the opposite. You’re an idiot if you don’t look at past performance, cause that is what indicates future behavior. That’s so funny, I’ve only heard it that way. 

Zach Oshinbanjo: I think it’s the potential thing. Somebody’s struggling, or they strike out a couple times, well they’re gonna get better.

Then you want to believe it’s the opposite.

Lee Zuvanich: I’m sorry, but I’m too jaded for that. 

Sarah Schumacher: It’s probably referring to investments. Like it’s startups or past performance, I don’t know. 

Lee Zuvanich: Oh God, this is just poisonous. 

Sarah Schumacher: Okay, now I have to go look up where that came from. Yeah, we now have to see the context.

But yes, we’re, basically we are all in agreement that that’s BS and that yes, past performance is indicative of the future. 

Lee Zuvanich: That’s who they are until they’ve really proven otherwise in a big way. 

Sarah Schumacher: Now I think that there are contexts for that we [00:25:00] have to keep in mind. So if I’m working with a designer oh, here’s a look at my portfolio.

 A developer, sorry. I can be like, okay, cool, did you get design mock ups? You know what I mean? So there are pieces of it to where depending on what you’re doing, you do need to find out, who did they work for on a previous team? Because if they worked with really competent people before that enabled them to do good work, and then you bring them into a startup environment and they’re like, alright, figure this out!

Not everyone’s cut out for that. You need to think about those things.

Zach Oshinbanjo: I’m, Generally very skeptical. I always think someone’s trying to get the edge, trying to get over on me.

I think one of the things we were talking about when we started this recording was money can’t be the sole motivator for someone to embark on something. Because that is only going to go so far. In my situation, I’m potentially trying to put someone on a contract or a grant, I’m like, okay, they’re going to come onto it, they seem to invest it in the idea, and then it’s like, okay, of course, I’m going to pay them.

40, 50, 60, whatever grand to do whatever they say they can do. But beyond that, are they going to care? Are they motivated because they’re like, wow, this is going to be big. I want to be on the ground level on something that could be potentially big. Or they’re like, well, I believe in the vision. I [00:26:00] want to do that.

 So it solely can’t be based on I’m going to get 40 grand. I’m going to move on. Yeah, it has to be more than that. It’s like an idea to be skeptical, but positively oriented. I believe that this could be something I’m going to get paid as just a principle. You should always be compensated for your expertise and your time.

 What more can I offer beyond that? And that’s, full investment. I can be committed to it. I believe it makes sense. I’m being paid. 

Sarah Schumacher: It’s a learning environment too. You’re going to have a lot of skills that you come away with. If you’re money motivated, go apply at Google.

For the type of business we’re talking about, that’s not who we’re looking for. if you want money, just go get a full time job. None of us are doing this for the money. We could all make a heck of a lot more money doing, like, a job. You could do other things for sure.

It’s because you believe in the vision and what’s being built or you want to build out your skill set in a way that you’re not going to get anywhere else.

Zach Oshinbanjo: Yeah, that’s probably the biggest challenge. I have to be cognizant of that and I think I, I have to identify, okay, what am I looking to achieve?

Does this person seem aligned to that? Or are they just like sweet, I can’t wait to get [00:27:00] paid and get a cyber truck or something like that. There has to be more there. I have to understand what’s in it for them, which sometimes can be a cynical thing.

 They’re doing it cause they want to help. The reality is most people aren’t just doing it because they want to help. It’s personal gratification. It liberates their soul, or are they getting paid? Something happens. 

Sarah Schumacher: You have to be careful too not to swing too far the other direction because the problem is that many of us that do the work because we enjoy making things, we don’t think about the money, the people that do think about the money use that as an excuse to not pay us the money.

So there needs to be this balance too to be like if someone’s underselling themselves, I remember there was a freelancer I heard years ago who was underselling their skills. They did not know what they should be charging and they came in with a rate and I said you should be paid more and I paid them more.

Because they were undercharging what they were worth, right? People can be resentful if they’re doing it because of the mission. But then they’re not being compensated fairly. That can weigh on people over time, too. So that’s why it is so important to have these discussions and be like, okay, maybe you’re coming in at a lesser rate because you’re becoming a co [00:28:00] founder, you’re getting equity or whatever, but you really do have to talk through this stuff and just have like open doors, too.

 If things change, what’s your communication style and how do you handle conflict? can we talk about this stuff if you feel like things are taking too long to move forward or whatever? 

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, and will you own it when you’re the reason something didn’t go well?

Sarah Schumacher: Exactly. Yes, totally.

Lee Zuvanich: That’s 

why I always want to work with them before we get fully into it because you want to give them some assignments or, if it’s mutual and you’re both at the same level, Okay, here’s what I’m going to own, here’s what you’re going to own. See you in a week. Can they work autonomously when they drop the ball because everybody always at some point is gonna make a mistake, right?

You want that to happen before you go into an agreement together because then you can confront them hey, you said you’d own this totally understand things come up Can you tell me what happened or hopefully they came to you and you didn’t have to do that, right? Yeah, right, but you give them this opportunity to own their mistakes and maybe they come back and they’re like, well You know, you didn’t get me this thing.

You said you’re gonna get me So I can’t really be held responsible. Well, I don’t want to work with that person. From that moment, now I [00:29:00] know. Okay, I’m going to be managing you like a child. So where 

Sarah Schumacher: do they take responsibility? 

Lee Zuvanich: Yes. They can tell you that they do all day long and, oh, I ran this project and we made this money, but until you work with them, you don’t know if actually someone on their team was really pulling more weight.

For them like you guys were saying. 

Sarah Schumacher: Especially with managing type positions a lot of times like those are the people that take credit for all the people that are actually doing the stuff .

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, and those people sell themselves so well.

Yeah, and the people who are really good at manipulating other people They sell themselves well, they sound great They look good on paper and it’s hard to know and that’s where like you were saying the network is so powerful Yeah, I mean I almost hired someone at one point for a pretty high level position Just to find out he had really deeply harmed someone in our community.

And I just had to ask. But if I hadn’t asked, I never would have known. He gave me references that were never gonna tell me this stuff. 

Zach Oshinbanjo: Yeah, he’s giving you the best. 

Sarah Schumacher: Or don’t know, too, because those kind of people surround themselves with other people that will believe what they say and discount everything else.

 They write the [00:30:00] story in their own heads, they tell everybody they know around it, and then everyone that figures out the story, they just leave. 

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, exactly. No one wants to be associated with it, so you can’t find the information. 

Sarah Schumacher: Yep. 

Lee Zuvanich: It’s difficult. 

Just tie it all back together, I guess, to your original kind of analogy of marriage.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah. 

Sarah Schumacher: Don’t get married in a month.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, don’t meet someone on a matching app and go all in with them a week later. Don’t do that for any reason ever.

I wanted to come back around and talk about tools and tactics too, because I’ve used some systems that help me understand people’s personalities and where my weaknesses are, because you want to hire or partner with someone who compliments your weaknesses.

You don’t want Another partner who’s just like you like, oh my god, we’re so alike. It’s like having another one of me. Well, that sucks Cuz now who’s gonna be the

Zach Oshinbanjo: double the character flow. 

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah Okay, so you’re both good at sales and you’re both terrible at time management and money That’s a problem.

Usually you want your technical and your non technical person and [00:31:00] hopefully one of them is great at sales and There’s some pretty obvious formulas out there But I think that instead of diving into it just in the interest of time we can put all this on the website

Sarah Schumacher: it might be getting longer.

Yeah. With all my notes. I know, I’ve got a lot to add to it. I have ten points, but this might double. So go check that out for more info. 

Zach Oshinbanjo: Yep. 

Sarah Schumacher: Cool. 

Zach Oshinbanjo: We’re gonna go ahead and wrap up and close up. Founder problems. That’s it.