The relationship between co-founders can make or break a startup. This isn’t a gut feeling or an intuition. Research on high-potential startups found that roughly 65% fail because of problems between the people at the top, not the product, not the market, not the funding.
Conflict takes a hundred forms: disagreements over equity, resentment that someone isn’t pulling their weight, feedback that lands as an insult, a decision made without you in the room, the slow accumulation of things left unsaid. The list is functionally infinite.
There is no immunity to conflict. The healthiest and most high-functioning founding teams do not run from it. They embrace it–and they have the skills to navigate it well.
A team that can move through conflict has done its homework; invested the time, energy, and resources to set the groundwork for the relationship before it’s under load. If you want a strong structure, you begin by building a solid foundation.
Co-founder issues can show up at any stage of growth in the org. Some founders don’t scale with their functional title. Not all co-founders share in the spotlight, or the same amount of ownership. All of this creates tensions in the relationship. Those can be hard conversations to traverse without skilled guidance.
The earlier a team can invest in solid footing for their relationship, the better their chance of success.
“I highly recommend the team at Reboot. They’ve been such a help to me that I’ve hired them for my entire leadership team.”
Nathan Barry CEO, Kit
EPISODE 169 // December 8, 2023
Emma, Gill, and Lizzy, the co-founders of Brood, a startup aiming to revolutionize modern family care. They share their experiences navigating the complexities of launching a startup amidst the pandemic, dealing with imposter syndrome, and the intense emotional and psychological challenges faced by startup founders.
Episode 15 // April 9, 2015
#15 – Becoming a Leader: The Crucible of Co-Founder Conflict
Three co-founders of JW Player revisit the hardest moments in their eight years together, and how the conflict itself is what turned them into leaders.
Episode 69 // October 6, 2017
#69 – Effective Communication for a Growing Team – with Erin Frey & Ti Zhao
What does your co-founder do when they're scared, angry, or triggered? Do you know what they need in that moment? The founders of Kip talk with Jerry about emotional literacy and helping each other regulate when hard things come up.
Episode 67 // September 7, 2017
#67 – The Energy of Our Emotions – with Ben Rubin & Dan Harris
The unlikely co-founders behind 10% Happier are candid with Jerry about how their individual anxieties shape both their relationship and their company.
Episode 16 // May 7, 2015
#16 – Mindful Partnerships – with Zelle Nelson & Maureen McCarthy
What if your co-founder agreement came from a place of hope rather than fear? A conversation about building agreements around how you want to work together, not around what happens when things fall apart.
Episode 151 // October 13, 2021
#151 – The Heartbreak of Every Day – with Nitin Agrawal
Interstride's co-founder and CEO on the loneliness that followed the sudden death of his friend and fellow co-founder, and how grief eventually restored his confidence in his own leadership.
Since 2014, Reboot has worked with thousands of leaders across the globe, including founding teams at every stage — from two people and an idea, a post-Series B team renegotiating who runs what, to co-founders deciding whether to keep going together at all.
Most advice aimed at founding teams is structural: get the vesting schedule right, write the operating agreement, define the roles. That work matters. It is also, by itself, insufficient, because the conflicts that end companies are rarely conflicts about the details. They’re about the thing underneath it.
The founder who agreed to the equity split and has quietly resented it for two years. The one who stopped bringing up problems because the last three times went badly. The pair who are technically aligned on strategy and haven’t had an honest conversation in six months.
Co-founder relationships behave like other close relationships. They come with attachment styles, coping mechanisms, histories, and blind spots. Then you layer on what it takes to run a company: defined roles, equity splits, who decides what, who holds power. Every co-founder meeting has all of that in the room, whether or not anyone names it.
Co-founder coaching works on the relationship itself: what each of you actually needs, what you’re each avoiding, and how to build a way of talking to each other that holds up when the stakes are high and everyone is tired.
Founding teams often come to us when something has already broken, and they expect mediation: a neutral third party who will hear both sides and issue a verdict.
That isn’t what this is. Coaching a founding team is not about determining who is right. It’s about helping you both see the pattern you’re caught in, understand what each of you is protecting, and develop the capacity to work through the next conflict without a third party in the room. The goal is not a settlement. It’s a relationship that can carry the weight of the company you’re trying to build.
The proactive co-founders. You may have done this before, you know how badly it can go, and you want a better experience this time.
Founding teams need both halves.
The practical half: how to give feedback that can actually be heard, how to divide decision rights so you’re not relitigating the same call every quarter, how to name a problem early instead of at the point of rupture, how to have the equity conversation.
The radical self-inquiry half: understanding why a certain tone from your co-founder sends you straight into your fifteen-year-old self, why you find it impossible to ask for what you need, why you keep hiring around a problem instead of naming it. Founders tend to bring their whole history into the founding relationship, and that history shows up most forcefully under pressure.
Reboot coaches work across both dimensions at once, because working on one without the other doesn’t hold.
Our Formula
Practical Skills + Radical Self-Inquiry + Shared Experiences
=
Enhanced Leadership + Greater Resilience
We work with co-founders in a few different configurations, and the right one depends on where you are:
The International Coaching Federation’s 2024 research shows what investment in coaching produces:
%
increase in individual performance
%
increase in team performance
%
increase in organizational performance
For founding teams, the return shows up somewhere the numbers don’t quite capture: in the conversation you’re able to have in month eighteen that you couldn’t have had in month three.
Our 1:1 coaching contracts are month-to-month, with rates varying based on session length and frequency. A typical engagement includes two 60- or 80-minute sessions per month, with access to your coach between sessions. Co-founder work is often structured as a combination of joint sessions and individual coaching, and we’ll help you figure out the right mix on the intake call.
Reboot was founded on the belief that in our work lies the possibility of the full realization of human potential. Work doesn’t have to destroy us. Work can be the way we achieve our fullest selves, and in doing so, we become more effective leaders, colleagues, and human beings.
We believe that helping clients develop practical skills is important, but not enough to create the transformation they’re seeking. To be a leader, you must also cultivate a fearless willingness to look deeply through self-inquiry.
For founding teams, that willingness is the whole ballgame. The companies that survive their founders’ conflicts are the ones where both people were willing to look at their own part in it.
Whether you’re two months in and want to build the foundation properly, or two years in and stuck in a pattern you can’t get out of, Reboot’s co-founder coaching can help.
For over a decade, Reboot has guided leaders through the complex terrain of business and personal growth. These books capture the essence of our coaching methodology, helping you navigate the intersection of personal growth and professional excellence with humanity, courage, and purpose. They offer a roadmap to becoming not just a more effective leader, but a more complete human being.
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