The Wrong Co-Founder Will Kill Your Business (How to Know Before It's Too Late)

Fabien Koutchekian built his first company with two co-founders. They were completely misaligned.

After one year, Fabien left. The company failed.

As Co-Founder and CEO of Genomines (plant-based metal extraction, £45M Series A, 30 people across France and South Africa), Fabien's second attempt went very differently.

Here's what he learned about choosing and working with co-founders.

What you'll hear:

The questionnaire that reveals misalignment before you start. There are specific questions you can ask your co-founder before you begin. Compare answers. Fabien shares what actually matters and what questions most people miss.

Three warning signs your co-founder relationship is failing. Fabien breaks down the early signals he missed in his first company and what he tracks now. If you're seeing these, you have a problem.

How to track productivity from day one. This is your early warning system. Fabien explains how to define productivity for your specific business and why tracking it weekly changes everything.

The unified front rule. Fabien and his co-founder have one rule they never break. It creates safety in the organisation for creative conflict. He explains why this matters more than most founders realise.

Why complementary skills matter. Are you bringing the same skills to the table or different ones? Fabien explains how to assess this and why it determines whether you need this co-founder or not.

How the relationship gets stronger under pressure. When they raised £45M Series A - the most stressful time - they got closer, not more critical. Fabien explains what this signal means and why the opposite is a warning.

When to leave. Fabien left his first company after one year. Deep down, he knew it wasn't working. He shares how to recognise when it's time to go.

The reality:

The wrong co-founder is worse than no co-founder.

Fabien now works with someone where stress brings them closer together. They've gone from lab to field in 5 years. Industry standard is 10+ years.

That's what the right co-founder partnership enables.

One action: Listen to the end for what to assess about your co-founder relationship today.

Submit your questions: hello@peer-effect.com

One action: Listen to the end for Fabien's specific advice on what to assess today.

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi, I'm James Johnson, founder and CEO coach. Welcome to Peer Reflex, the podcast where your peers will tell you what's unlocking them in the 10 million plus business. Choosing the right co-founder is hum but essential. And maintaining that relationship takes focus. My guest today, Fabian Kuchekian, is the co-founder and CEO of Gen Mines. They are a biotechnology company pioneering plant-based metal extraction. They recently did a 45 million series a day and over 30 people across Romans in Southern Africa. This is the episode for you if you want to remember how to make it work with your coming from member. So when we were doing an upfront for this, we discovered not only are you running a successful business, you've also had time somehow to write a book. What made you decide to write a book?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Actually, I was back then I was at I was studying in Paris. One of my class was about the crisis in the Middle East. And so there was this amazing teacher called Gilles Capel, but I couldn't I couldn't attend the class actually because there was no more place. It was an entire amphitheatre. I think it was maybe 400-500 people, but there was no more place because everybody booked so fast because everybody was expecting the class to be extremely interesting. So I couldn't attend it, but actually a friend of mine back then was able to attend it and took notes of the class, gave it to me, and I was like, Oh wow, that's super interesting. But I thought that that's so complex, that's a it's quite a deep subject that I thought, okay, how could I remember that in a long-lasting way? So I thought, oh okay, maybe I should write a novel, an historical novel about this. And my best friend Nico was like, Oh, that that's super interesting that you're doing that. I want to do that with you. And so he wasn't studying the same thing with me back then, but we just started thinking, okay, let's write something about that. And it was more like uh just a project back then, and at some point we were like, Hey, we should maybe we should try to get it published. It was more like a joke than something else. So we sent it to several publishing houses, and eventually, one of them called Larmaton in France, so the fifth largest publishing house said, Yeah, I want to publish it. Of course, initially we thought it was a joke, and but actually we uh yeah, we just published it with them. I don't know, that was just very random for us, and we uh but we liked it. Of course, we didn't have a huge success, as you might expect. It was just uh well amateur, amateur writer, and uh and back then when I look back at this book and I read it, I'm like, my god, yeah, I'm sure I can write better now. Although I think something important to mention is that it was uh pre-TadGPT era, so I think writing a book now would be significantly simpler than back then. Yeah, it was a funny project, it was a funny project.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Which would be interesting to come, even when you were a student, you're looking to collaborate and build things. That's that's quite impressive. You managed to even get it to be published by proper publishing house. Yeah. So how do you get from courses, writing books to where you are today? What's your origin story?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

So initially I'm a mining engineer, and then I studied some I studied political sciences in in Science Po. And so that that's when I had this classes about the crisis in the Middle East, etc. I tried to attend them, didn't manage to attend them actually. After that, I went to do some strategy consulting for two years. I think this is quite an interesting job, but to be frank, it was not really for me. So I because I wanted to build a company in all I don't know if it's still the case, but a lot of people told me like if you want to build a company and be successful, it's important that that you go and and you try to be a strategy consultant because you're gonna learn a lot of things about how to analyze data, etc. Look, I don't know if that's true. I think there's a lot of different ways of being an entrepreneur, and but that was mine, basically. That's what I've done, but not really for me. And eventually, but again, this guy was discussing that earlier. Nico, my best friend told me like, hey, you know what? If you want to be an entrepreneur, maybe be an entrepreneur. And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna start building something. And actually, I built this first company with two other co-founders. We were super misaligned, we didn't see the journey the same way at all. So naturally it failed. After six months, I started wondering if this project really for me doesn't seem to be just doesn't seem to be the right fit. Uh we like our energy is at the right way, we're not really productive, etc. So I figured okay, maybe I should leave. So after a year, I left and I applied to a program that's called Entrepreneurs First in France. So it's it initially it's a British program, now it's a bit everywhere in the world, and it's not the case anymore. Now they're doing only AI, I think, almost, and uh and just shipping a lot of projects to the US. But in the past they had a real, I would say a real presence in France, in Paris. So I went there and the approach of this program, the methodology of this program is that they put together people that are very different with very different backgrounds. So most of the time you have half of the core that is I would say that has training of researchers, for instance, quite heavy, quite deep, deep in terms of science. The other part is more like business. I guess I would not fit in a very specific category because I was both an engineer, I would say, and um kind of a business, a bit of a business background. And I met my co-founder, she's a doctor in plant biotechnology, super impressive. She's uh she basically studied how to transform, to study and to transform plants. So when we met, we started discussing about about about problems. So we started discussing about okay, what do you think are the big challenges of our era? So we discussed about a lot of things, we discussed about obesity, we discussed about uh metal sickness, about integration of people, about immigration. Um, and then we discussed as well about the fact that our societies we need a lot of metals to do a lot of things to to move, for instance, if you want to produce a car, if you want to produce a train, whatever, you need a lot of metal for the raw material to produce things. The problem is that producing these metals is extremely quite polluting and it's very expensive right now, it's very energy intensive. But we desperately need them to transition, so basically, to reach a point where we're using technologies to produce energy, to store energy that are emitting less carbon than what we're doing today, by for instance, burning coal to produce uh energy. And that's just an example. And so we uh we discussed about uh about that, and we figured okay, how could we I would say uh find a way to extract these metals that would be less impacting for the environment, it would be potentially uh cheaper, and that would be natural-based, inspired by nature. And so we started researching stuff, etc. And I asked her, okay, what do you know about the mining industry? And I'll tell you what I know about plants. The only thing I know about plants back then is that I worked briefly in the mining industry, but very briefly. Again, it was not for me, it was before the strategy consulting. And and one thing I observed is that on open pit mines, sometimes you have plants that are managing to survive, to grow. And so I shared that with her. I basically say, Oh, yeah, so that. And actually, she worked on specific type of plants that we call hyperaccumulators that have this fascinating ability of being able to extract metal from the soil. So the way it works is that the metal is in a bioavailable form. So either it's because it has rain, for instance, and the the rain has an acidic effect on the soil, or the plant is producing secondary metabolites, or there can be many mechanisms that are transforming a metal that is not bioavailable into a bioavailable form. The plant absorbs the metal afterwards, it's being uptaken a bit everywhere in the biomass of the plant. And so we figured okay, maybe we could extract metal profitably using this technique. And so we started working on that on genetically enhancing plants, file patents, and so on. So now it's been five years we are doing that. Our team of a bit more than 30 people divided between a bit more than 20 people in France, a bit more than 10 people in uh in South Africa. And what we're trying to prove at the moment is that so we've proven in in at said stage that it was possible to do that. So we had the early field tests, we've done it in lab as well. And so we've done the entire cycle from the metal that you have in the soil down to uh you've processed the biomass of the plant and you recovered nickel at the right purity level. So we've done the entire cycle, I would say. And now what we're trying to prove is trying to prove that it can be significantly cheaper than the rest of the rest of the industry. So that's where we stand, I would say, at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Wow. Sounds like a very cool technology. This the unfortunate technology focused, so I don't know if we don't dive into the technology behind it, but what I'm quite interested in is this seems like you've had very different experiences in terms of co-founders, and that's the thing we're particularly going to talk about this day is you had one experience where you went down the wrong punt, and you've gone had one experience you've very much gone down the right pull month. And I'm wondering if you should how you might recognise firstly, whether you if you're going down the wrong path, and secondly, how you then identify the right co-founder.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

I I think it's very difficult, first of all. So I'm approaching that with a lot of humility. I can't guarantee you that if I was to I'm very happy with my co-founder, but if I was to build a company in the future, the first thing I would do would be to ask if you would be willing to build again a company with me. Because that's so rare and difficult to find the right co-founder. Because you need to be in the right mindset, you be too you you you need to want to be the company, it's very demanding, it's very stressful, there's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of money that's at stake as well. I think it's important to mention that, and it's becoming very personal. I used to joke about my co-founder as being my work wife, basically. So I have a fiance in my private life, and I have a work wife with my co-founder. So you get to spend an enormous amount of time together. This is very demanding. I think the first thing is that you for people that are listening to us right now, there are I would say a questionnaire that exists. You can just type this in on Google and ask for okay, a list of questions you need to ask your co-founder, and and basically you compare your answer. There's no right or wrong answer, you just need to make sure that there's nothing that is diverging too much. For instance, for us, we wanted to, we were not afraid of the fact that we would have to be the company for quite some time. Okay, it's uh it's what we're doing, it's requiring a lot of efforts, a lot of time. If you think about it, you develop your project of a long, I would say, timeline, because genetically sourcing, genetically enhancing a plant, giving getting all the authorization extra, it takes time, and then developing a project takes a lot of time as well. So I think it's I think you need to I think you need to recount that you have to be ready to be uh to be working in the long run. So if for instance one of us would have wanted to exit after two years or three years or whatsoever, that would be uh that would have been a big problem. And I think that's fine. It's not uh it's not good or bad, it's just a question of knowing yourself. In our cohort at Entrepreneur First, I remember there was two very successful guys that I still know that are building something in in crypto, and it's they're already making enormous amount of revenue, they don't need to depend that much on external money, etc. It's like super impressive with Rebel, and it's a path that is very different than ours. Where I would say they are it's a path where you're seeing, I would say, more revenue quicker, you have different metrics, you have different uh timelines. I would say that's that's something that that's amazing because they knew it was important for them, it was a different approach, it's different profile, and I think that's completely fine. Just a question of knowing exactly uh what you want to do. The type of thing is so there's an implication of the timeline of your project, how quickly you can exit. There are some others that are about I would say more I would say personality, right? It's very important to understand that you prefer to work like this or like this. It's when you work in biotechnology, you have to accept to be in transportation because the lab is not in the center of Paris, right? It's not in the first suburb or whatsoever, it doesn't work like that, it's slightly outside of Paris, and I think it's very important to recognize that and to be willing to spend some time in the public transportation. You have something, and some people for them it's unthinkable, they have to spend time in in Paris, etc. And they don't want to they want to travel by bike, etc. And that's completely okay. It can be very simple things like this, but I think asking the right question at the very beginning on what is okay for you, what's not okay for you, how do you want to how do you want to work? Are you for us we are we are exposed to developing countries as well who are working in South Africa, we have an entire team there. I think you have to be willing to take the plane, go there, check what's happening, and you have the problem uh that are tied to the countries where you're working. You can have problems in South Africa that you I don't think you would have in in France or the US, for instance. So I'm not making generalization, but all of these little details, initially, when you start working and you start working on a startup, very often you you're very optimistic. And for us, that was that. Paradoxically, I think if I had to launch a company right now, we're trying to do something extremely difficult. We're trying to do something extremely difficult, it's like a first founder company where like you're a bit naive and then you go and you do that, and it's fun, it's very exciting what we're doing, etc. But at the same time, it's also very hard. So, yeah, you have all of these kind of all of these kind of things.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

So when you stumbled, you can do a simple amount of kind of preparation terms of when you aluminum business plan, when you aluminum, how many minimum manual lumined on time scale? As you say, there's so much stuff that you don't know, and almost if you didn't know, you may not even stumble. How do you find do you spend time remaining aluminum this journey? So when you were doing it together for five years, sounds like it's a very happy sort of pumpkin shield. You were clear you were aligned when you stumbled. How are you checking in on that alignment on that journey?

SPEAKER_01 14:56

A lot of conversations. We're spending a lot of time together. I'm at the lab right now, so you I don't think there's a I don't think there's a secret sauce. Sometimes you you disagree, and I think it's it's very healthy. I think we got to a point where sometimes you get into fights, huh? I think it's important to mention that. It's been a long time. I've not gotten into a fight with my co-founder because we I think with time as well you learn how to to disagree in a constructive manner. And and please don't tell her that, but she's very often right. So it's making it's making things, it's making things simpler. But but yeah, no, I think I I don't think that's a secret source, unfortunately. You have to work, it's exactly like in a relationship, you have to work on it, and not everything is perfect, and sometimes it's hard. And so you uh when we were raising funds, it's it was paradoxically with my co-founder. I think a very positive signal I can see, and I think it's an early detection you should have, is that the fact is that the more complicated things are becoming, the closer we are. And so when it's under stress, under a lot of pressure, we're not criticizing each other whatsoever, we are trying to find solutions. And for me, that's very positive. You've always been like that, and and we're trying to be very productive, I would say, and to find solutions. Because I think to if you want to become an entrepreneur, you have to like solving problems and having problems, you're having problems, problems, problems, problems. And making my role is to spend time solving issues, and I think I like that. Deep down I like that because some days you're like, damn, oh my god. But at the same time, I think it's I think deep down I really like it because they're definitely easier. I'm sure I could do something way easier than what I'm doing at the moment. I but I really like what I'm doing. I really like what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

I think it's often though the challenge for founders as they scale is that they do there's a kind of adrenaline of the problem solving, the phone fighting, building in the details, and then as you start scaling, you're just a bit more like you build your management team, you'll detach from it. You're still solving problems, but the problem change and you're less directly doing it. And for quite a few founders, that can remove some of what they enjoy the most out of their role. Have you experienced that at all?

SPEAKER_01 17:18

As you've scaled, yes, yes, of course. Of course, in the sense that you're getting different problems. You're getting two different problems, and most of the time you're getting problems you've not anticipated, which makes the job quite stimulating. And that's true when you get to have people that are more experienced than you. For instance, I can't disclose the name, but we're we're gonna recruit uh very soon. I think we'll announce it probably next month or so. A professional from a big tech company that spent 25 years in in HR in this uh in this company, because we for us it's very important to to bet on the people we have and the people we'll have in the future. And that's true that when you get these people that are older than you, way more experience or whatsoever, they know how to handle most of the challenges that you're facing, but then you have other challenges because you need to handle these people that have way more experience than you. Okay, so it's slightly the dynamic is changing. Now you need to you're being challenged by people challenges, yeah. And I think this type of yeah, you you need to have approach that with a lot of humility because most of the people I'm managing, I'm like, I don't have, I would say I can be critical towards what they present to me or whatsoever, but at the end of the day, I'm not gonna tell them how they should do their job, and frankly, they're doing it very well, yeah. So it's a bit different, but you need to inspire, you need to you need to challenge, you need to solve interdepartmental issues because you again you're working in the very high pressure environment, so it's only natural that people sometimes disagree, and they disagree for the right reason, and that's the most important for me. I I don't have any problem that people disagree or whatsoever or challenging each other because at the end of the day, we're all earlier we had a workshop and we all want the same thing. We disagree to get there, but we all want the same thing. So that's that's also very that's very rich because it's sometimes you have this realization or where you have very smart people literally around the table, and it's you feel lucky to be in this very stimulating environment debating ideas. You don't debate people, you you debate ideas, you debate strategies, and that's very rich because at the end of the day, what we're trying to achieve right now nobody has done before. So there are things will get right, there are things will get wrong, but at the end of the day, it's not really important. It's what at the end of the day is for us, what's important is to succeed and to and actually to find the best way to do this. But nobody can have the pretension to say, okay, I'm right, it doesn't work like this.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

What strikes you then that particularly for your business reason, that you're you're there is no answer, there's no path to follow, like you're doing it for the first time, both as phones, but also just the technology and everything else. It feels like you need to have that discussion, creative common flip. But I feel like the coming from the relationship is therefore even more important because if you've been really aligned, it creates a level of safety within the organization where people can probably discuss a bit humbler, discuss a bit more because there's no like permanent struggle going on at the top. There's connection, which probably leads to better outcomes. So I wonder whether that's true.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think you're right. It's with my co founder. We call that the unit unified front. It's we are always a unified font. I would never, for instance, I might disagree with her sometimes, but I would not do that publicly. It's like we discussed about the change ideas or whatever, but if she says something, this is us saying that, basically. So I think it's very important, is that and she's doing the same for me. So I think this this co-founder relationship is extremely important. You you need to establish rules as well, and you're learning as time passes by. At the beginning, you don't really know, but sometimes you're like, Oh, I wish I would have known that way before, for instance, and but but you're just you're just learning. Because I think early on it's very important to spend a lot of time with your co-founder, uh, spending time understanding the way this person works and this what is the trigger, what are the triggers for this person, uh, what this person likes, doesn't, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

As a coach, you see a lot of co-founder relationships where they get external support to still like at its most extreme version mediate, but hopefully that happens in a little relationship development because you're something like one thing that experiments numbers of member is you can become quite moment focused, and eventually you can let the relationship helmet because you become a really simple thing, but eventually it's really important to keep on number thing that relationships. I'm curious about you going how many you see. You spent much time at the beginning. Do you make a separate effort on relationship as well, or is it always within just one context?

SPEAKER_01 22:09

No, not necessarily. It's because it's such an intense job, you get to talk about a lot of things because when you're an entrepreneur, you we are working so much that the there's a lot of permeability between your private life and your personal life. It's just when you're working every day such days, Sundays included at some point, you you get to to talk about a lot of things. You get to talk about a lot of things. So naturally, you develop the relationship on this, and and you start to anticipate as well what the person needs because that's also very important.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah. And so from your set of experience before, if you were to compare, sorry, a lot of people listening will have a co-founder relationship, probably. There are many more co-founders than there are solo founders. Not everyone meets their perfect match and then continues to develop that. If for people listening and maybe been they've got to somehow they've been the co-founder for three to five years, what might you suggest that works for you in terms of things to avoid that you've seen when it didn't work for you before, and things to really nail that really help you build that co-founder and protect that co-founder relationship?

SPEAKER_01 23:26

I think it's important not to make too much assumption. Rather, if you can ask your co-founder or whatever, just ask directly. Give this person a call, talk to this person directly, message this person. I would say it's better to avoid writing messages because there can be easily some misunderstanding by message. It depends on the state of mind of the person that's receiving the message, it depends on the state of mind of the person that's sending it. There can be many things that are like misleading, so it is better to have a direct interaction, that's my view. What else let me see? For me, it's difficult to imagine because it's going well, but I have some examples around me of friends that have built companies and basically the co-founders' relationship have gone have gone terribly wrong. And that's very difficult. But I think by talking to both of them, I can tell that they could have stopped. They could have stopped the relationship long time before. And I think sometimes people are avoiding but avoiding doing the right thing, but deep down they they know they know that it's not working. For me, that's not the case. Deep down, I know it's working. And that's making that's making things easier, I would say. But uh, but yeah, I also think that sometimes I'm seeing some founders actually building companies alone. I must say, like if some of us, if some of them like are listening to me, I must say I must show my profound respect to them because it's very impressive. I'm not sure I would be able to do that alone. I'm almost sure I wouldn't be able to do that alone. I think it's a very lonely journey in this case, and at the very top, even less difficult, difficult.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

But interestingly, it's I suppose it going back, it is almost like a relationship where sometimes I think being with the wrong co-founder is worse than having no co-founder. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they were the wrong co-founder at the beginning, but sometimes that dynamic, the dynamic can not work, but also sometimes people's motivations can change, like things can happen during a month so that the announcers might have been aligned in year one, put them by year following if those announcers are no longer aligned as are they willing to travel or do they want to just have face-to-face, how long are they willing to wait for personal things change? So I think checking in on that periodically and being quite explicit about it and going, are we still aligned on vision? Are we still aligned on how we're gonna do this? Are we still aligned on rules? Uh is quite important.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

I think it's super important, it's a very good idea. To be very frank, we're not doing it in a formalized way. I think we're more doing it like through discussions here and there, but we're not like formalizing that by saying, okay, now we need to assess whether or not we're still aligned. But it's rather, yeah, we're discussing about that here and there, but it's not. I think when you're genuinely excited about your project as well, I think something that's driving us is just curiosity. We're so curious to see because we already know this is working, but we want to know to what extent is it working? What are we going to be able to do? What are we going to face the challenges, solve them, etc.? It's just super exciting. It's just super exciting. So we're not really in the mood of saying, okay, what are we going like big, I would say, orientation in life, or we have to make it working because it's uh because we're curious, we're just interested in saying, okay, what's going to be tomorrow?

SPEAKER_00 26:53

I think what's interesting about doing a check-in at some point is even just reaffirming that you are aligned can be quite helpful because and even not just for you, but for the team itself. Because I think also as you start scaling, the rumbles change your rumble can slightly change as well, like what you're focused on, and just I think also giving each other permission to do the rumble that's right for you at the next stage of your business is quite helpful because I feel that the founders end up accumulating all these tonus and responsibilities that actually weigh them down, and you feel there's that founder guilt of might need to do it because no one else is going to, but actually, is that the stuff that really moves the need? I think just having that conversation together and going, okay, let's want to spring clean them rumbles and go, okay, let's see what we can chuck them out and either give someone else or eliminate, and maybe this is not important. I think can be quite freeing as well.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

No, I agree with you. I agree with you, it's it can be a very good idea. Again, to be frank, we're not really formulating that.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

It seems like you guys are pretty busy having just fundraiser and say curiously following where the tech takes you. From when you said before, if you're looking at when a co-founder thing is potentially not working, you made quite an early decision. It was clearly it was obviously clear to you that it wasn't working. If people are listening, thinking about is our relationship working at the moment as a co-founder, what are a few sort of warning signs that you would share to watch out for?

SPEAKER_01 28:29

I think the first one is productivity. Are you productive or not? If the person is telling you I'm gonna do that and not doing it or not holding deadlines or whatsoever, it's not a really good sign. I think like basic values, honesty, transparency, these kind of things, I think are super super important. Yeah, this these are the challenges I had in my previous with my first company. And now it with my company right now, with microphone now, it's it's basically uh transparency, clarity, we're like in the same boats, it's it's very different, we're very productive. So yeah. Going from lab to field in our industry, normally it takes 10 years. If you look yeah, yeah, it's not a joke. If you look at at all, I would say a crops producer, you look at buyer, etc., you'll see it takes a lot of time, huh? Yeah, normally to get to a plant that has been genetically enhanced to to a field, it's yeah, a bit more than 10 years. If you're not produ uh if you're not productive and you can define productivity in a many very different manner, for instance, at the beginning of your project, maybe you do uh customer discovery or whatsoever. Okay, if you talk to three customers per week, there's a problem. If you talk to 10, 50, 20, I don't know, you need to define it what's an acceptable KPI for you as well. But you can track KPIs that are very simple. It doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be planting a genetically uh on field. It can be uh it can be very simple, but you can track productivity at the very beginning of your co-founder relationship and track whether or not it's working. And if it's not working, it's like maybe there are a reason to explain it, but if there's none, it's like maybe it's not the right person for you.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

I really like that how you can like almost define what are the things, what is some way of tracking productivity because as that is gonna differ company to company by the three obvious way interview, research interviews could be quite a key one for you guys. I'm trying to think of other clients if they've gone that deep in terms of defining a productivity metric to see the sort of the effectiveness of their partnership for us.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

We were tracking like this at the beginning. We're just discussing with many groups, with metallurgical groups, etc., and saying, okay, how many are we what is the percentage we're covering in the market? So are we talking to and at the end of the customer discovery? How have we discussed with a significant part of the market? We discussed to 40, 50, 60 percent. We're an industry where it's not uh you don't have thousands and thousands of groups, so naturally you can if you cover several hundred, you you discussed with almost everybody already. But but that's the way we define the metrics. You can have many others, okay. For instance, I know some very deep tech groups, sometimes they define it technologically as well by okay, do they have have they written a white paper whatsoever? If there's a company I really like, it's called Chiper Run, and they are at Entrepreneurs First as well, it's super cool what they're they're doing. And I know that they are publishing like a white paper very regularly, and that's uh that's a very good matrix as well of I would say technological traction. There's no wrong API. I think it has to be defined very in a tailored manner to your business. But I think tracking this productivity very early on, it's important. And in any case, over the entire journey of your business, you will track productivity. We are tracking productivity uh on a weekly on a weekly basis, and for some tasks on a daily basis. The only thing is that when your team is becoming bigger, you have way more KPI, especially in a project that has some different sectors, because we have a microbiological sector, we have a genetic sector, we have a sector of that is a specialized on propagation, we have tantrine processing, we have exploration, we have expansion, geology, we have a lot. So naturally you're end up being in a position where you have an inflation of the number of KPI you're tracking, and that's normal. But the thing is that if it's something that can be filled per department, it takes 10 minutes to fill all the KPIs, so people can do it very quickly. And I would say on our side with my co-founder, we have a way of tracking productivity in a very simple way, I would say, and we can have a quick snapshot of the entire company in a few minutes. In a few minutes.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

I feel talking to you about how productivity, you're tracking productivity could be a whole other episode in itself. That's definitely something that a lot of founders struggle with. So we will talk about it again in the future. But before we wrap up this, like what is one thing for founders listening that when it comes to your sort of co like an effective co-founder relationship, what do you think is one thing that they could do today to either analyze their co-founder relationship or improve it?

SPEAKER_01 33:15

I think it depends for how long they've been working together. But one way of looking at it is of course we set up OKRs like probably all startups in the world, but basically, like looking at okay, have you met your OKRs or not in the past? I think super important. I think the second thing that we've not really addressed so far is as I think the complementarity as well. Are you bringing exactly the same skills to the table? Because if that's the case, is it really useful? Or are you bringing I would say a complementary set of skills to the table? Do you would you be able to get some some skills with another confounder instead of this one? I think that's super important. It's always the same for this type of skill. Do you need to pay people to get these skills, or do you have a co-founder that maybe will be less paid at the beginning at least, or will have more equity? All of that is a it's just a giant equation, and you have to make it work.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Fabian, thank you so much for sharing so openly. And congratulations on founding what sounds like an amazing co-founder.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Yeah, I'm very lucky and a lucky guy.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Such a good episode today with Fabian. I really like the suggestion on going on Chat GPT and getting it to suggest some questions to discuss with your co-founder to check on alignment, not just on vision, but also on how you want to work and time frames. We'll see you next Wednesday for another founder episode. As ever, if any questions, just email us at hello at peer-effect.com or reach out on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening and happy scaling.