Where does your partnership actually stand?
It takes ten questions and about five minutes. Each cofounder answers alone, and then you compare. The gap between your answers is the point.
What the diagnostic measures
It's adapted from the questions Jonah uses with founding pairs and with investors doing cofounder diligence.
Part 1: How you handle each other
Five questions cover the hardest thing you've been through together, whether you can state your cofounder's side of a disagreement, how often contempt shows up, whether you can name a tension that helps the company, and whether you picture each other in the company's future. Each founder gets a score out of five, and contempt counts as a flag that outweighs the score.
Part 2: Whether you see the same company
Five questions cover who owns what, who makes the final call, whether you'd split equity the same way again, what your last real fight was about, and which conversation you've been avoiding. These are compared across both founders. Matching answers count as agreement, and matching warning answers count as a shared blind spot.
The four pair types
- The strong pair handles each other well and sees the same company.
- The dangerous pair looks fine together and tells two different stories in private.
- The coachable pair agrees on the facts but struggles with how they treat each other.
- Two different companies describes a pair whose founding team has become the main risk in the business.