Let me start with a cliche - A Startup is a child of your marriage with your co-founders. Well with that logic, I have had many failed marriages. This is just a brief curation of learnings from the same.
The Journey began in the first year of my college, when the idea of Rentux hit me and I wanted to try it. The college was online and I found someone who was interested in this, let’s call him Person A. He said he knew coding and building websites, so I took him on board, and 30% equity, we made a deal. Such a naive move. When college started offline in the second year of my college, I launched rentux.in and it was working really well. Now, Person A was supposed to join and take over the tech part. A couple of months passed and there was no output from his side. Now it was time for a serious conversation and maybe a separation. That was my first marriage that didn’t work out along my startup journey.
For a couple of months, I was running it alone and the response was really good. Rentux was famous in college. But the 2nd wave of Covid hit and colleges shut down again. Many people had noticed me and wanted to work with me on Rentux. So I rolled out a message to a few of my groups and a few people responded, let’s call them Group A. That was the time I made another mistake of getting married again, without knowing them enough and this time there were quite a few people with whom I was working with. Having online meets, planning, reaching out to people, researching rentals and sharing economy as college was online again. We decided to create an all-in-one rental platform. Assigned Designations to everyone (such a fancy move) and fired up. A few weeks later, not many people stuck around. What they were doing was Quite Quitting, I later understood the concept. Things didn’t work out again. And now, yup, time for a serious conversation again and a separation!
Now, I thought I learnt from my mistakes and this time, Person B joined me as a co-founder. We had known each other for more than 1.5 years and he was a really smart and capable person. We decided to get into Agricultural Machine Rentals and did a deep research, surveys, networking, and onboarding for around 6 months. We named that brand as RAS (Rentux Agri Services) which later became Leafora. We were really on fire and things were taking shape. We were coming back from a YCombinator Startup School Event when Person B got a call from him home. They asked him to quit this and prepare for MBA Entrance. And, a separation again.
The next couple of months, I wasn’t really working on Rentux as I was focused on Impressions. Once the Impressions was over, I asked Person C to join me. I met her at Impressions, she was in my team. At the same time, one of my friends offered to rent his cameras and audio equipment on Rentux. Person C and I agreed to try that out. For a month we tried, the problem was the Equipment and operation was in Shillong, Meghalaya and we were operating from Pune. I was searching for some camera rental businesses/startups in Pune. That’s when I encountered Person D of RentAcross, Person E and KirayePe. (will come to all these later). Now, I was very well aware of camera rental and was looking forward to growing. But there were 2 problems. Operating remotely and a huge communication gap because of language and other barriers between us and the vendors, and the missing fire in Person C. After a month, we decided to close it.
That’s when Person D (Founder of RentAcross) and founders of KirayePe offered me to join them as a co-founder. I had to make a decision. I studied both companies and their respective founder backgrounds. I decided to go ahead with RentAcross as the company had made good revenue in the past and the founder also had a great 20+ years experience in tech and was heading a team of 90+ engineers at another company. RentAcross was his part time thing. We agreed upon certain terms and I joined RentAcross as a co-founder and CEO. That was in my final year of college. I decided not to apply for internships and placements and dedicate my full time to RentAcross. I onboarded Person E as my vendor in Pune for camera rentals. And we started operations, traction was good and we could see the numbers growing. The problem was, I was the only one full time on this and the control and all decision and majority stake was with Person D, the founder of RentAcross. He had a full time tech job, he was working on another SaaS startup of his own and hardly any time was left with him for RentAcross. It was sabotaging me and then I could see I am the only one putting in the effort, sometimes even doing deliveries at 2 am in the midnight because our delivery boy messed up. During that period I was selected for G20 Startup20 Jagriti Yatra and there I met Person F, founder of RentO. Our wavelengths matched and after coming back, I thought to have a discussion with Person D and Person F and work together as co-founders. But before that, Person D of RentAcross told me he doesn't want to continue working on RentAcross and as he owned the brand and everything, and nothing was on paper, I was suddenly out. It was a really bad feeling, feeling of being dumped and there we go, another failed marriage.
But Person F of RentO still wanted to work with me, so we decided to go ahead and now we are working together, trying to figure out if things could work well between us.
This was just the brief of all my co-founder marriages along my startup journey. Even after all this, I still don’t want to give up. I’ve tried working with 30+ people and received 7-8 offers to join their company, to work with them and each time it didn’t work out I learnt.
It is really hard to find a great co-founder and here’s what I learnt from my past failed partners -
- Person A - Skills and hunger to learn is really important in a co-founder
- Group A - Don’t have people when you don’t need them, even if they are for free. They will eat up your time.
- Person B - The long term commitment really matters in any relationship, startups requires sacrifices and if your partner isn’t willing to do those, it isn’t a good fit
- Person C - Your partnership should have ownership, that can’t be learnt or transferred, it had to be the default, without it, things fail
- Person D - Titles of Cofounder and CEO don’t matter when you don’t have authority. Don’t work with part timers who don’t have their startup on top priority. Do paperwork, it is really important, you can’t trust anyone. If you are working with people elder to you as co-founder (almost double my age) most of the times, they'll be the one leading and taking calls.