Married co-founders are a startup’s secret weapon – TechCrunch

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Headings…
Married co-founders are a startup’s secret weapon
Startups with coupled co-founders at the helm are scoring big funding round
“Just put the phone down.”
Investors are warming up to married co-founders
Divorce won’t necessarily be the demise of a startup
The secret weapon

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“If I was running Clearbanc by myself, it probably would have gone off the cliff eight times at this point,” says Clearbanc co-founder Andrew D’Souza.
“If I were running the company by myself, it would be half its size,” adds Michele Romanow, Clearbanc’s other co-founder.
Startups with coupled co-founders at the helm are scoring big funding rounds and exiting companies.
The bond of a relationship may be a secret weapon in company building for new-wave tech startups, but that doesn’t come without risks, like co-founder disharmony, equity supermajority and even divorce.
Co-founder couples say that if you’re scaling a company, you’ll have to be okay with putting other life decisions on hold, like going on your honeymoon or having kids.
While they say that being a co-founder couple has strengthened their bond, they’re working on setting boundaries.
When the married co-founders of Apli, a Mexico-based on-demand recruiting platform, walked into the office of ALLVP, the fund wasn’t entirely sure about what it meant to invest in a company run by a married couple.
The business model, product market fit and potential impact for the company were typical factors the fund mulled over before writing a check, but ALLVP also considered the founders’ married status.
If their finances are combined, a co-founder couple could own a supermajority of a startup.
Say two non-married founders owned 20% of a company — a co-founder couple whose finances are tied together would own 40%.
“The only thing with equity that matters to me is if the founders have enough,” says Andreessen Horowitz General Partner David Ulevitch.
“Co-founder disputes are the number one early startup killer, but it doesn’t have to be that way,” writes Garry Tan, managing partner at Initialized Capital and former Y Combinator partner.
If this line of reasoning holds, co-founder couples may be at an advantage because they already have built-in communication tools in their relationship

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