The four conversations to have before you write a line of code together
Co-founder breakups, not competition, are the leading killer of two-person startups — and post-mortems across founder communities show the same four undiscussed topics doing the damage. Have these conversations before the first commit. They take one afternoon. Unwinding them later takes months and sometimes the company.
1. Equity and vesting
Not just the split — the mechanics. Four-year vesting with a one-year cliff protects both of you: if either person leaves in month eight, the company survives it. Decide the split on forward-looking contribution, not who had the idea. If the conversation about a 60/40 split feels too awkward to have now, note that every future conversation is harder than this one.
2. Commitment and money
Hours per week, and for how long. Who needs income, and when. "Full-time once we raise" means different things to a person with savings and a person with a mortgage. Name your personal runway to each other in months. Misaligned runways are survivable if known, fatal if discovered.
3. The exit question
What outcome is each of you building toward? A $400k acquisition is life-changing for one founder and a rounding error to another's ambitions. On this platform especially — where apps get listed, verified, and sometimes sold within a year or two — "would we take $300k in 18 months?" is not a hypothetical. Answer it now, in writing, knowing the answer can change by mutual agreement later.
4. IP and the walk-away
Everything built goes to the company — signed, not assumed, including work from before incorporation. And decide the divorce terms while you like each other: what happens to code, customers, and the name if one of you walks. A one-page founders' agreement covering this costs a few hundred dollars to draft properly and is the cheapest insurance in startups.
None of this requires lawyers on day one; it requires honesty on day one, then lawyers to formalize what you agreed.
Which of the four have you actually had, in your current or last partnership? And if you skipped one — which one, and what happened?
Replies (4)
Follow-up from maker intake: "We're 50/50 and deadlocked on a product decision. The conversations above didn't cover tie-breaking."
Correct, and it should have been conversation five. Options in ascending formality: designate domains (each founder has final call in their lane — product vs. business is the common split); a standing advisor both of you trust holds the tie-break; or a 51/49 split precisely so deadlock is impossible (the 1% is a governance tool, not a value judgment). What doesn't work: 'we'll always agree.' You won't, and the first real deadlock arrives attached to something that matters.
On the exit conversation, from the platform's vantage point: we see this mismatch surface in real time when an app gets acquisition interest. One founder wants to take the offer, the other wants to keep building, and nothing in writing anticipated it — the deal usually dies, and the partnership often follows. If you write down one thing from this thread, write down the number at which you'd both sell today. Revisit it every six months. It is the cheapest conversation on this list and the most expensive to skip.
Follow-up from maker intake: "What does 'IP assignment including pre-incorporation work' actually mean for an AI-built codebase? Claude wrote half of it."
The assignment covers whatever rights exist in the work, whoever or whatever produced it: your prompts, the curated output, the architecture, data, and everything committed. The AI-authorship wrinkle (purely AI-generated material has contested copyright status) is a reason for more paperwork, not less — buyers in diligence now routinely ask how AI-generated code was reviewed and who owns the result. A simple contribution-and-assignment agreement naming AI-assisted work explicitly closes the question. Cheap now, expensive during an acquisition.
Follow-up from maker intake: "Is a 'founders' agreement' different from just incorporating and issuing shares with vesting?"
Incorporation plus stock agreements with vesting covers equity mechanics and IP if drafted right — for many two-person startups that is the founders' agreement. The one-pager version matters in the gap before incorporation, or alongside it for things stock paperwork doesn't say: commitment expectations, the exit number, decision domains, the walk-away terms. Think of it as the memo you'll both be glad exists during the one conversation you hope never to have.
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