Navigating the Co-founder Relationship

When I set up my PR agency, Pangolin at the age of 29 I honestly didn’t give much thought to how important building a healthy co-founder relationship would be. One of the main reasons is that I started the business with three founders, not two - myself, a close colleague Jamie, from my previous agency, and David, who had a great professional reputation, but I hadn’t ever worked 1:1 with before. As is often the case, after a couple of years Jamie left the agency to focus on other passions in his life, which left David and I to push the agency forward together as a duo. 10 years on I took a moment to reflect on what I’ve learnt about navigating the infamous “co-founder” relationship.

Separation Anxiety

With a recent report citing that 45% of founders said their mental health was ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ in 2024, I have witnessed first-hand the importance of being able to detach, relax and recover during “out of office” hours (whenever that actually is?!). It turns out not having a personal friendship with David before setting up the business has been a total blessing. As co-founders, you’re basically married - during the week you are by each other’s side through the good, the bad and the ugly. But when the evenings and weekends finally come, I have found having separation critical in maintaining balance. David and I live on opposite sides of London, we have very few friends in common and so the weekends continue to be the sacred time when we can both disconnect and not talk shop. If you are friends with your co-founder, I would encourage you to be strict with each other to find clear moments of separation to help reduce stress and anxiety levels, and allow you to shift your mind out of work mode.

When Two Become One

Another challenge with a co-founder dynamic is the art of quick decision making. For the mathematicians out there, you’ll know two isn’t an odd number, and therefore it ultimately takes one co-founder to feel more passionately about an issue versus the other in order to make a decision. At the beginning of our working relationship I know we wasted hours making minor “joint” decisions, but as the business has grown at pace we’ve developed the skill of knowing what should be a solo decision versus a “co-founder” one. It does mean you will likely challenge each other on something you personally decided to do a few months ago, but unless its business critical, you need to quickly give each other the space to make rapid decisions and respect each other’s view.

Opposites Attract

By total chance, David and I are quite different in the ways in which we work and how we approach problems. And that’s become a superpower. We both have very similar skill sets and backgrounds on paper - we were client-facing account leads at previous PR agencies - and so it would often feel a little uncomfortable telling David I was better than him at parts of the business, and vice versa. But the faster you can define and own your different strengths, the faster your business will be able to move forward. It’s about putting egos aside, which for us as two self-deprecating founders isn’t that tricky, to enable you to both operate with a deeper sense of direction, ownership and purpose.

Moving Forward Together

A lot has changed for us both since 2014. From single 29 year olds, to married with two kids and mortgages. Naturally you both have your own goals in life, and we discovered, following what can only be described as “couples therapy”, the importance of taking the time to regularly check in with each other to make sure we’re still heading in the same direction. You often feel married to the business, and if that’s the case you need to be investing time beyond the day-to-day “To Do list” to keep it healthy. We now have quarterly sessions to discuss the bigger picture and to better understand both the personal challenges we might be facing, as well as any exciting opportunities on the horizon that we want to pursue in the world beyond Pangolin.