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Most conversations about co-founders start with the search: where to find one, what skills to look for, how to split equity. Carly Chase came to host a Startup School workshop and started somewhere else entirely: with you.
Chase is an entrepreneur and advisor who has worked with early-stage founders across industries. She opened the session with a stat that resets the whole conversation: according to Founder Collective, the average time to exit a startup is 7.5 years. That's not a working relationship. That's a long-term commitment, one that deserves the same kind of deliberate thought you'd put into any major life decision.
"Be intentional about things before you bring other people into the equation," she told the room. The session that followed was all about what that intentionality actually looks like in practice.
Stop. Check Your Reasons First.
Before getting into how to build a great co-founder relationship, Chase made time to talk about why people get into them for the wrong reasons. She was clear: if any of these are your sole motivation, you're probably not going to find the alignment you need.
Chasing equity is one of the most common traps. Equity means nothing until a liquidity event, and statistically, those don't happen often. The title "co-founder" is permanent in a way that "VP" or "Head of" isn't, and treating it like a badge to collect is a way to end up locked into a relationship that doesn't fit. Similarly, treating a startup like a 1-2 year experiment won't sustain what is realistically a 7.5-year journey. And social pressure, the sense that everyone around you is suddenly co-founding so maybe you should too, is a genuinely bad reason to do it.
Chase's point wasn't to talk people out of starting companies. It was to push on the "why." Start a company because you have a genuine motivation and a problem you actually care about, not because there are a lot of VCs around and momentum feels good.
Know Yourself First
The part of the session that landed hardest was the push for self-awareness before partnership. Chase was emphatic: you cannot effectively evaluate a co-founder if you don't understand yourself first.
That means getting honest about your working style, your strengths, your gaps, and your real-life constraints; financial, family, health. It means knowing how you handle conflict. Do you run toward hard conversations or away from them? It means thinking about what your "day in the life" looks like a year from now, five years from now, and whether you and a potential co-founder actually share that vision or just share excitement about an idea.
Questions To Ask Yourself (and each other)
Motivations: Why do you want to start a venture? What are you prioritizing? What does your personal and professional life actually look like right now?
Lifestyle & Values: What does your ideal "day in the life" look like in 1 year? 5 years? What are three values you hope your company embodies – with customers, with employees?
Conflict Style: How do you handle stressful situations? Do you shy away from confrontation?
One thing Chase observed: co-founders are often people who are in the middle of figuring themselves out, which makes these conversations surprisingly rich. When you're both willing to explore openly, you build real empathy for each other. That shared process is part of what creates a strong foundation – but only if you actually have it, not if you assume it.
The Co-Founder Relationship Is an Active One
This was the session's core argument: there is no coasting. Chase described the co-founder relationship as one you have to actively invest in and maintain, like a marriage. The word she kept coming back to was ACTIVE.
That means working on the relationship continuously, not just when something goes wrong. It means checking in regularly to make sure you're still aligned, still choosing the partnership, still being honest about how things are working. Priorities shift. Life changes. What works at the founding moment might not work two years in. The founders who navigate that well are the ones who build a habit of talking about it, not the ones who hope it stays fine on its own.
Her practical suggestion: schedule it. Chase described doing half-day retreats with her co-founder every few months, time set aside not to review the roadmap, but to check in on the relationship itself. When that time is predictable and on the calendar, it creates a safe container for the bigger conversations. You build the habit of sharing, rather than waiting until things are already tense.
She also said something blunt that stuck with the room: passive aggressiveness kills businesses. When building is your only job and things are moving fast, unaddressed friction compounds quickly. You need a mechanism to talk through things, or they blow up.
How to Actually Find Alignment
Chase ended with a practical five-step framework for getting to real co-founder alignment, not the assumed kind, but the kind you've actually worked through together.
5 Steps to Alignment
1. Know Yourself: Understand your strengths, working style, and motivations before partnering with anyone.
2. Get to Really Know Each Other: Go deep on personal lives, motivations, conflict styles, and financial constraints. Not surface level.
3. Talk About Your Visions: Short-term and long-term. What does life look like in 6 months? 2 years? 10 years?
4. Calendar It: Set aside consistent time to connect. Every 6 months, revisit steps 2 and 3.
5. Be Honest + Remove Ego: Priorities shift. Stay honest and keep ego out of it.
She also added one more thing for the students in the room specifically: don't assume now is the right time. Work experience often makes you a meaningfully better entrepreneur, and there's no shame in taking a job you're genuinely excited about first. The problem will still be there. The opportunity will still be there. And you'll show up to it with more to bring.
The Takeaway
Carly Chase didn't come to Startup School with a shortcut for finding the perfect co-founder. She came with something more useful: a case for slowing down, doing the internal work, and approaching one of the most consequential professional relationships you'll ever have with the seriousness it deserves.
Know yourself first. Choose your co-founder deliberately. And once you do, keep showing up for the relationship, not just the company.
