Council Post: Why I Don’t Have A Co-Founder As An Entrepreneur

I have never had a co-founder. One of my friends once bought me a mug that said, “Doesn’t play well with others.” And that’s how I feel about co-founders.

I have created multiple businesses and have always been the only founder. I back my instinct and go for it. There’s no need for discussions or considerations, I just go for it as any entrepreneur should. The nearest I have come to have one was when I launched joint ventures of Black Marketing around the world with other entrepreneurs. That didn’t end well.

There are many ways to open up overseas. With remote working, you can do this easily and speedily if your business can be done by an outsourced team. If it needs to be done on the ground in that country, that is harder to do.

I had the bright idea that I would open up joint ventures of Black Marketing with experienced entrepreneurs in specific locations in order to scale fast globally. Effectively, they were sub-co-founders of a regional business of my master business and led operations in that country.

I had joint ventures in the U.K., North America, Hong Kong, Australia, the Philippines as well as Singapore. Not only did I visit each location to train the co-founders up, but I also had weekly communication with them to give them all the support that they needed.

It was a disaster. 

I sold more services to clients from Singapore when I visited than they did on the ground every day. I proved to myself that not only was this business hard to scale, but also that even though my partners were experienced entrepreneurs, they couldn’t sell my proposition.

My global scaling is now done through LinkedIn, Zoom calls and (before the pandemic) visiting specific locations for a week to meet 50 potential clients and conduct various talks to a room of entrepreneurs. This is slower but more effective for my company, and I’m totally in control. It put me off having a co-founder for life.

However, I can understand why people do have co-founders. There is less risk if you are both deciding on what to do. There is someone to bounce things off of and talk through things. 

I would argue that the downside is a lack of decision making, slowness of reaction to opportunities, second-guessing your co-founder and deadlock. I deliberately target founders and not co-founders on LinkedIn, and I run to the hills when I see co-CEO. How on earth do you have co-CEOs? In my opinion, there can be only one.

I cannot tell you the number of times that I have pitched a “founder” only to find out that there are three or four other “founders.” And although the founder loves the idea of employing my service, they have to convince the other co-founders of the benefits. Of course, that’s where it falls down because only one leader in an organization can benefit from my service unless they are prepared to double or triple the budget, and most SMEs are not. 

For me, it’s easier to create empathy with a founder than a co-founder. I decide. No one else. For good or bad. That’s the way it needs to be. You get the credit and you get the downside alone when it all goes wrong. Then move on and go again.

Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?