Silicon, Surf, and Startups: How we built our co-founder team

With two, we dreamt. With three, we soared.

This is the eighth part of my Megacool startup series. It delves into Nicolaj and my decision to co-found Megacool in 2015 after two years as colleagues, our realization of needing more tech prowess, the serendipitous discovery of our third co-founder amidst the waves, and woven-in advice for those on a co-founder hunt.

Here's an overview of the full series:

• Part 1: How the Megacool journey began

• Part 2: Why we chose San Francisco to start our new company

• Part 3: Embracing Failure – How we tested 10 different startup ideas over 10 weeks

• Part 4: Hackathon 1-3: From AI travel agent to photo management adventures

• Part 5: Hackathon 4-7: The messy middle

• Part 6: Hackathon 8-10: Wow, that's megacool!

• Part 7: How we validated the Megacool SDK

• 👉Part 8: How we built our co-founder team 👈 YOU ARE HERE

• Part 9: From idea to live product

• Part 10: Our bootstrapping hustle

• Part 11: How we raised $1.6m in funding

• Part 12: How we got acquired

• Part 13: From Alpha to Acquired: The product, growth, and business model journey

• Part 14: The emotional founder roller coaster

• Part 15: The epilogue: Reflections on the whole journey

Becoming co-founders

"Nicolaj will skip to the book's most important chapter while I read it cover to cover."
— Journal entry 2015-08-25 reflecting on some of the ways Nicolaj and I were complementary.

I loved working with Nicolaj. While at Dirtybit, scaling the mobile game Fun Run to millions, Nicolaj and I became an unbeatable and complementary duo—think PB&J. He was the programming wiz with a knack for product and strategy; I was the organizational ace with a business and marketing touch.

Driven by a shared passion for challenging norms, we transitioned from daydreaming about starting a startup in San Francisco to pooling our savings, moving there, and founding Megacool Inc.

A screenshot of "Our [principles] formula" from our internal notes space. In it, we wrote: Optimism/solution-oriented, Work ethics, Reflections and evaluation, Challenge each other and be accountable, Craziness and [positive] mood, Agile and humble, Psychological safety (Know where we stand with each other). Complementary: Nicolaj: Technical competency, Aurora: Organization

Before jumping in, we outlined an intention agreement where we agreed on: 

• splitting the company equally, 

• give Megacool our undivided attention for at least two years, 

• fund it evenly from our savings until securing outside investment, and 

• forgo any side projects. 

We committed to regular feedback sessions¹, starting bi-weekly for the first six months, then transitioning to monthly and eventually quarterly evaluations. These sessions were challenging but crucial.

Our personal evaluations are getting more "real" and brutal now that we're working closer and closer and the "honeymoon phase" has passed. — Journal entry 2015-09-24

Co-founder advice: I recommend finding any way possible to collaborate with a potential co-founder before tying the knot. Be sure to agree on what happens to any IP developed during a trial should it not work out. 

Co-founder relationships are like marriages without sex. The more scenarios you can plan for and agree upon before a potential divorce, the better: Write down and compare your values and expectations to yourself and each other, your work style, time off, work-life balance, what makes you tick, what are your pet peeves, how you respond to feedback, how you deal with stress and uncertainty – and anything else under the sun. Get to know each other!

Do a pre-mortem and ask yourselves: we're already heading for divorce in 18 months. What happened?

Since I had worked closely with Nicolaj for two years already, it was easy to answer yes to a question like: "Do I see myself working 24/7 with this person for the next 10 years?" It's hard to answer for someone you barely know, but address any doubts that may arise from asking it nonetheless.

Our need for a third technical co-founder

Despite my formal education in engineering, my coding skills required a lifeline. While I honed my understanding of our technical needs, my hands-on coding ability remained limited. As the time came to create our MVP, it became imminent that we needed more power.

A few months prior, Nicolaj had collaborated with other Norwegian-tied companies in Silicon Valley, such as Innovation Norway, Medallia, and Etleap, to host a bootcamp for talented graduate engineers from our university back in Norway². A dozen graduate students arrived in mid-August to explore opportunities and projects in Silicon Valley.

We gave a Megacool presentation (pun intended) and invited them to join us surfing during the weekend. Only one was brave enough (and had the energy to get up early after a busy week) to take us up on the offer: Tarjei Husøy.

What turned out to be our first team photo, thanks to the surf trip

We had seen Tarjei before. He studied communication technology engineering, the same as I, but two years behind. He was an extremely talented engineer who'd "grown up" on open-source projects.

Fortunately for us, Tarjei graduated without a set plan. Unlike most peers who secure positions a year or two before graduation, he kept his options open, eagerly awaiting the Silicon Valley boot camp.

Maybe our stars aligned?

Our informal surfing rendezvous turned into an insightful get-to-know-each-other session, hinting at our potential collaboration. It was the first taste of what humbly working together in a frustrating and unknown environment would feel like as we struggled in the waves, not knowing how to surf and looking every bit like clumsy sea lions on our boards. It humorously hinted at how we might handle challenges together in the future.

The best way to test for fit is to work together!

In our weekly meeting, we noted the following:

"Tarjei Husøy can be a great candidate. We need to learn what his work ethic is and if he's interested in doing a test month with us where we cover his travel, working, and housing expenses."

As our needs became more pressing, we asked Tarjei if he'd be open to exploring working together for a month. We thought a month would help all of us de-risk the decision to join forces.

"We're speaking with Tarjei tomorrow about joining us. Exciting!" —Journal entry 2015-08-25

He was interested and we created a "Letter of Intent" detailing that we covered his travel and living expenses during October so he would have as little cost risk on his end, while all IP would remain with Megacool should we decide not to proceed in bringing him onto the team.

He returned for the month of October, just in time to build the MVP for YC³.

We have decided to include Tarjei as if he's already one of us and staying instead of keeping stuff from him. — Journal entry 2015-09-25

During this month, we consciously treated him as if he was already staying for the long term. We shared all our dirty laundry. Leaving nothing out to help all of us make as informed decisions as possible towards the end.

Can't wait to work with Nicolaj tomorrow and not to mention for Tarjei to join in a few days! I'm so incredibly proud of what we achieved this last week⁴. Despite the backlog being far from empty. — Journal entry 2015-10-03

Screenshot from Tarjei's onboarding doc. Our expectations of Tarjei and what he could expect from us. Even though we were all speaking Norwegian, we aimed to have all our written communication in English in anticipation of scaling the team with non-Norwegians.

We wanted to be upfront and transparent about the process to ensure clarity and alignment.

October flew by. We accumulated enough data points to de-risk the vital decision to officiate the co-founder marriage. It was clear to us that Tarjei was both incredibly talented (dare I say a 10x developer without the controversy??) and crazy enough to fully immerse himself in our startup journey.

We also shared bad humor

Tarjei wants to receive an offer from us!! — Journal entry 2015-10-23

Hiring advice: After the successful process with Tarjei, as we would later scale the team, we continued gauging fit by working together with candidates, often opting for a 1-2 week paid trial or, for those employed, a paid collaborative mini-project over an afternoon or weekend. This method minimized risks and ensured candidates felt valued, even if things didn't proceed.

Titles

Assigning titles in startups can be a touchy subject. Right from the start, Nicolaj and I were on the same page. His expertise in business and engineering, enhanced by his time as COO at Dirtybit, made him the obvious choice for CEO. My strengths in operations and business steered me into the COO role.

When expanding our team, we'd been recommended by other startup founders to assign titles carefully. It's easy to give but hard to take back. As you scale, it's crucial that people scale with their titles and increased responsibility. 

I've witnessed startups where co-founders retain lofty C-titles without truly growing with the company. This misalignment hinders progress. Thus, it's essential to have distinct role expectations and regularly reassess them – ideally every six months (since that's how quickly a fast-growing organization changes). The goal is to ensure that roles reflect the company's current scale and that individuals are fulfilling their duties.

As startup founders, we should never let our pride get in the way of the growth and needs of our company.

For the CTO role, we initially held off to assess Tarjei's technical acumen, decision-making, scalability skills, mentorship, and management capabilities over time. Thus, to start, he accepted the role as our Lead Developer and co-founder.

Tarjei is in!! He updated his LinkedIn profile. — Journal entry 2015-11-02

As you'll read later, in the following year, it was clear just how instrumental Tarjei would be to our future. He was pro-actively upgraded to CTO of Megacool. We couldn't be more grateful for him taking a chance on us and joining this roller coaster.

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The three musketeers planning shenanigans at Galvanize’s popular Dolores Park corner

Sooo, back in the fall of 2015, our founding team was complete. We were now ready to figure out what MVP we would build. Would we make it in time for the YC deadline? And would it be good enough?

Continue reading the next part of this series: From Idea to Live Product

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A special thanks to

CansaFis Foote

and

Leo Hepis

for thoughtful feedback along the way 🙏

1. How to do Personal Evaluations

2. Norwegian University of Science and Technology

3. Y Combinator (YC) is the most famous startup accelerator, home to household names such as Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit.

4. Referring to the content marketing push we did in the prior post in this series.