Anushruti Singh
Metaversity, an edtech software platform was poised of success. Founded by former Twitter India chief, Manish Maheshwari and former Microsoft senior engineer Tanay Pratap, the start-up had even managed to raise a substantial capital of over $5 million. However, despite these favorable conditions, it crashed. What went wrong—the Metaversity’s founders’ conflicting visions.
Building a start-up is a journey fraught with challenges. Surprisingly, one of the threats to early-stage ventures often lurks within the very core of the business – the relationship between its co-founders.
While external factors like competition and a weak founding team can certainly contribute to a start-up’s downfall, recent research from CBInsights highlights a startling reality: most (23 per cent) start-ups fail due to internal disputes among their founders.
Noam Wasserman, the acclaimed author of “The Founder’s Dilemmas,” says in the book that a whopping 65 per cent of start-ups fail because of the conflicts between their co-founders.
This statistic underscores a critical yet often underestimated aspect of entrepreneurship: how to find the right co-founder. The ones whose dynamics and alignment match perfectly with yours.
CoFounder App to the rescue
The quest for the right co-founder is a critical decision that can make or break a start-up. But for many, the journey to find the right co-founder can be as daunting as looking for a life-partner. So to eliminate this challenge, a start-up has come up with a matchmaking platform—the CoFounder App.
It is the brainchild of two individuals with diverse backgrounds and a shared passion for nurturing start-ups—Prabhat Gusain and Prateek Anand.
Gusain’s journey includes roles as a growth strategist with Magicpin, impactful work with Start-up India, and an education at the University of Virginia. He later delved into venture capital with Caffeinated Capital in San Francisco. Later Gusain, along with a co-founder, was initially focused on web 3 but shifted to address the enduring challenge of co-founder discovery.
“My experience at Start-up India and my work as the chief of staff at Caffeinated Capital gave me a lot of insight into the start-up ecosystem. But there was a major urge to do something of my own,” he tells us.
The chance sort of presented itself, when Gosain came to know that his friend and ex-colleague Prateek Anand had sold his gaming company—Halaplay. “I then invited him to collaborate with me, which we did with web 3.”
However, the web 3 concept did not take off due to the market meltdown, and the duo pivoted to their next venture, the CoFounder App.
Idea for CoFounder App
The idea for CoFounder didn’t emerge out of thin air; it was rooted in a problem that both its co-founders had known about and experienced for years—the challenge of finding the right people to work with, particularly co-founders.
“This issue has plagued the entrepreneurial landscape for decades, yet it had never been approached as a comprehensive business opportunity. We reasoned that we could solve this issue with our abilities and our expertise, as well as our understanding of how entrepreneurs operate, since we’ve been there and done that,” says Gosain.
Typically, those beginning a business rely on friends, colleagues, or chance encounters at networking events. This method is fragmented, inefficient, and heavily reliant on personal networks. And the initial harmony and compatibility often deteriorates, resulting in the company’s collapse.
“Imagine trying to find your favourite book in a cafe without a centralised library—this is how co-founder discovery used to be. We aim to be the Amazon for co-founder discovery, a centralised platform where aspiring entrepreneurs can connect and collaborate with potential co-founders, advisors, and other critical role players,” he adds.
The platform is like a dating app for budding entrepreneurs and ambitious working professionals who aspire to build or join their dream teams. People can meet co-founders, founding members, advisors, consultants, and interns, all in one place.
The journey so far…
The journey of CoFounder began with a mission to find a solution for the co-founder discovery problem.
Initially, they posted dummy job listings on LinkedIn, seeking co-founders for various start-up ideas. The response was overwhelming, confirming that there was indeed a high demand for co-founder connections.
Buoyed by this validation, Gosain and Anand developed a minimum viable product (MVP) and launched it in the US market. The platform quickly gained traction, attracting users from various backgrounds and experiences. It became clear that CoFounder was addressing a genuine pain point of the start-up ecosystem. “Now we are promoting it in India,” says Gosain.
Gosain contends that their interface is not casual like LinkedIn or tinder, saying, “You don’t swipe right or left. It is a more serious set-up with an interface similar to Hinge, where you can prompt and text. It is designed to initiate conversations between aspiring founders, resulting in personal meetings.”
According to Gosain, finding the right co-founder is like dating. For guaranteed success, you have to meet a lot of people before you find the right person who is in complete alignment with your likes, your ideals, your working style and your approach to business.
CoFounder has a subscription-based model with competitive pricing, keeping user experience at the forefront. While their revenue generation is still in the initial phase, the team’s primary focus remains on solving the co-founder discovery problem for early-stage founders.
Plans ahead
The journey of CoFounder is just beginning, and the next 12 months hold exciting prospects for it. Their immediate goal is to establish the platform as a staple in the Indian start-up ecosystem, with hundreds of thousands of users actively using it daily. Once this is achieved, CoFounder plans to expand globally, enabling entrepreneurs from around the world to find their ideal co-founders and collaborators.
“We are semi-bootstrapped and incubated through a VC funds incubation set-up. We are also progressing towards raising investments. The plan is simple. The goal is to raise institutional capital in the next 6-8 months and establish our product everywhere,” says Gosain.
CoFounder is a testament to the fact that solving a real problem can lead to transformative change. By comprehensively addressing the challenge of co-founder discovery, CoFounder is not only making entrepreneurship more accessible but also fostering a global network of innovators and creators. In an era of decentralised collaboration, CoFounder is paving the way for aspiring entrepreneurs, regardless of where they start their journey from.
