Dr. Matthew Jones is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in working with co-founders to help manage critical conflicts that threaten their success. He is the author of the book, "The Cofounder Effect: How to Diagnose, Fix, and Scale Healthy Communication for Startup Success."

Matt has worked with hundreds of bootstrapped and VC-funded co-founder teams to help them repair and manage their relationships in the context of their growing business. In this episode, we discuss a wide range of co-founder relationship topics, including:

• Why co-founder alignment sets the floor and ceiling for entire company culture and employee performance.
• How most co-founder conflicts aren't about surface issues but deeper psychological needs for recognition and power.
• Why research shows companies founded by friends are more unstable than those started by strangers.
• The three communication languages of cofounders: operational (business), psychological (feelings), and archetypal (the vibe).

Quote from Dr. Matthew Jones, a clinical psychologist

“And those differences can start off and be quite positive. If we can manage that tension effectively. That's the magic of co-founders, right? Is the complementary skills and ways of operating that allows you to land somewhere even more effective than you could have individually.

“But those same differences that give you that magic sauce also can be sources of friction, like an arthritic knee that just aches every now and then, and sometimes gets worse and worse, right? And so that's where the tensions really have to be managed. And so that's why I advocate for making those differences as conscious and explicit as possible.”

Links

• Dr. Matthew Jones on LinkedIn
• Cofounder Clarity website
• Book: “The Cofounder Effect: How to Diagnose Fix and Scale Healthy Communication for Startup Success”

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Yuval Selik is co-founder and CEO of Promomash, a software platform and managed service for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands to manage their trade promotions and field marketing activities. Yuval is a former CPG founder who encountered the expensive, complex, and crucial process of managing trade promotions with stores and distributors.

Promomash launched in 2015 to serve mid-sized CPG companies that don’t have custom software and their own teams to manage promotion spend and budget compliance with retailers. With 125 employees, they now serve over 500 customers with their software and optional analysts who can perform complex sell-through reconciliation and spend analysis.

Yuval and his co-founder raised under $1 million from angel investors to get started, and the company is now profitable and growing steadily. Yuval also hosts The 7 Hats Podcast, which helps entrepreneurs master the seven key areas of their lives, ensuring both success and fulfillment.

Quote from Yuval Selik, the founder and CEO of Promomash

“That's really the reason why we did not raise funds from big investors, because I don't want to have the pressures of somebody on my board telling me that I have to grow 50%, 80%, or 100% year over year.

“Sometimes you need to pull back in order to fix your product. Sometimes you need to push forward and step on the gas a little bit. But that decision needs to be my decision, not a VC investor’s decision.

“Others in our market that raised big VC funding, in our competitive landscape. They are not run by their founders; they're run by their investors”

Links

• Yuval Selik on LinkedIn
• Promomash on LinkedIn
• Promomash website
• The 7 Hats Podcast

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Vince Mayfield is cofounder and CEO of TalkingParents, a co-parenting app for communication and coordination used by divorced parents raising children. Cofounder Stephen Nixon was a lawyer with family cases who recognized the need for a secure, unalterable communication record to improve co-parenting and family harmony.

He pitched a development company owned by Vince and Louis Erickson to build the first app. They came together to cofound TalkingParents in 2012. Stephen worked with judges, courts, and lawyers to build awareness and get their first customers. The app records and stores all communications between co-parents, including chats, message, phone calls, and calendars. The company started growing and eventually became profitable as word spread, they charged more for the product, and the app improved.

TalkingParents is now a profitable and growing company with well over $10 million in revenue, 65 employees, 100,000 paying customers, and 500,000 people using the app. They are self-funded with no outside funding.

Quote from Vince Mayfield, cofounder and CEO of TalkingParents

“The company you are when you have 5 million in revenue and maybe 40 people, it's not the same company you are when you've got 20 million in revenue and say 80 people. It's not. You've got to iterate and change.

“And you've got to have the stamina for that. You've got to be willing to put in the effort and do that. Yeah, exactly. There's no shortcuts to this.

“I love it when people tell me, I've got an idea and I'm going to start up and it's going to go viral overnight. And my first thought is bulls--t. It's not going to happen that way.

“It's much harder than everybody thinks. You hear about the overnight success, but what you don't see is the 10-year grind that it took to get there. And the sacrifice and delayed gratification that goes along.”

Links

• Vince Mayfield on LinkedIn
• TalkingParents on LinkedIn
• TalkingParent website

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.