Cofounder Memos

Cofounder Memos

An alternative to resumes for startup hiring

Who Is A Cofounder?

I think a cofounder is any team member who owns a considerable amount of stock options and joined early on. Executives and early employees are all cofounders. They shape the culture of the company and share the founder’s mission.

Common Traits of Co-founders

Salespeople and VCs brag about their connections, academics brag about their research, technical experts brag about their skills, designers brag about their products, but just like founders, cofounders (who could be any of these) brag about their unique and diffident visions of the future that seem absurd to others!

Cofounders don’t have the most professional and polished track records. They appear to be not specialized enough in any specific topic or traditional corporate position, because they keep shifting careers, and they don’t last long in a single company (if they’re not fully utilized). They think they can do any job. (and they actually can, but in a startup environment not a corporate one)

Just like founders, they are dreamers too, and they also want to build companies, they might have even tried before. That’s why if they decide to join a founder after truly believing in a mission, they can help by multiple factors, and they can play different roles at different times.

They’re usually opinionated, they disagree with the founders and keep challenging their assumptions, but at the end of the day, they know that the founder/CEO is the captain of the ship and the one who can steer the company’s vision, and when a decision is made, the captain should be able to trust everyone to execute well.

They hate internal politics, they just can’t function in big corporations because of this very reason. They’re more upfront and direct to the point. When a company is infected with internal politics, they usually leave. That’s why they’re natural habitat is startups not corporations.

They’re also usually minimalists, they don’t care about what most others care about. They don’t care about high salaries, expensive cars, or designer brands, they don’t care about the noise, they focus on the signal, which for them is equity, and they work hard to increase it’s value.

Resumes Are Useless For Early Startups

Whatever is on the resume can be found on LinkedIn, which I would argue is more accurate than resumes. People tend to customize resumes (just like cover letters) to fit a specific job description or to match a company’s internal search engine by including specific keywords. But LinkedIn is open to everyone, and it’s much richer than a one page resume.

When hiring your first 20–50 team members, you’re not hiring employees, you’re hiring co-founders, you care about vision, values, passion, and personality as much as you care about skills.

You need someone who sees the future the way you do, and who is excited to work on the company’s mission as much as you do. A resume won’t tell you that.

A Cofounder Memo

Unlike a resume, which tells the story of a person, a “Cofounder Memo” would provide details about the set of values, beliefs, and interests a person has. It tells their visions of a new future, and what they’re excited about, regardless of the company or the open position a person is applying to.

Unlike a resume, which is a record of history and can’t be changed (you can’t change where you worked before!), a cofounder memo is a lively document that changes as the world view of a person changes when they have new experiences, or when they see new opportunities.

Unlike a resume, a cofounder memo is a pull not a push document. A memo is not meant to be sent when applying for a job, it’s meant to be published on a personal blog or website as a continuously changing professional identity.

A Sample Cofounder Memo

Here is a sample Cofounder Memo I’ve put together in a Google Doc, don’t be limited by this, it’s just a quick example.

If you like this, please send me some other examples of cofounder memos.