YC Startup School — Module 3: Building Your Founding Team

Official Curriculum

• 📺 All About Co-Founders — Catheryn Li & Divya Bhat (YC) ✅ transcript as keys-to-successful-co-founder-relationships.md
• 📺 Co-Founder Mistakes That Kill Companies — Dalton Caldwell & Michael Seibel ❌ no transcript (but co-founder-equity-mistakes-to-avoid.md by Michael Seibel covers the equity mistake patterns)
• 📺 How to Split Equity Among Co-Founders — Michael Seibel ✅ transcript as co-founder-equity-mistakes-to-avoid.md
• 📺 How to Work Together — Kevin Hale ❌ no transcript (but how-to-find-a-co-founder.md by Harj Taggar covers finding and working with co-founders)

Instructions

1. Read ALL three transcript files from ${CLAUDEPLUGINROOT}/skills/yc-3-building-your-founding-team/references/:

- keys-to-successful-co-founder-relationships.md — Catheryn Li & Divya Bhat (YC) - co-founder-equity-mistakes-to-avoid.md — Michael Seibel (YC Group Partner) - how-to-find-a-co-founder.md — Harj Taggar (YC Group Partner)

1. Present key frameworks from each lecture with speaker attribution
2. Assess the user's co-founder situation: solo / searching / paired — and equity/vesting status
3. Generate a workbook-style self-assessment derived from the lectures
4. Save to knowledge/yc-startup-school/module-3-assessment.md
5. Run the interactive Self-Assessment Workbook:

- Ask each question ONE AT A TIME using AskUserQuestion - Wait for the user's response before asking the next question - After each answer, provide brief feedback connecting their response to the module's frameworks - After all questions, synthesize their answers into a personalized assessment

1. Save the completed assessment (questions + answers + synthesis) to the appropriate knowledge path

Key Frameworks

Finding a Co-Founder (Harj Taggar)

• Why you need one: More work done, emotional support, pattern matching. Facebook, Apple — both had co-founders
• Solo founder exception: Only if (1) high-conviction domain expertise AND (2) technical — then build and find co-founder in parallel
• What to look for: Stress tolerance first (most important), aligned high-level goals, complementary trajectory over current skills
• Where to find: People you already know first — never assume they're unavailable; always ask. Also: YC co-founder matching, hackathons, open source
• 3 breakup causes: Loss of mutual respect / both wanting CEO title / different work ethic expectations
• Maintenance: Regular 1-on-1s, small pressure releases vs. one big confrontation

Keys to Successful Co-Founder Relationships (Catheryn Li & Divya Bhat)

• Explicit communication on roles, expectations, and decision-making authority from day one
• Regular check-ins — don't wait for problems to surface in product or investor meetings
• Alignment on the "why": personal goals, life circumstances, exit expectations

Equity (Michael Seibel)

• Core principle: Be generous with co-founder equity — it motivates future work, not rewards past contribution
• Default to near-equal splits: Trying to calculate the "perfect" split is the wrong mental model
• Vesting + cliff are non-negotiable: 4-year vesting, 1-year cliff — applies to ALL founders including CEO
• Smallest founding team: Minimum people who can build MVP + get it to customers + start learning
• CEO must retain firing rights regardless of equity split
• Pre-PMF breakup guidelines: Before 1-year cliff → 2-5% token equity. After cliff but pre-PMF → no more than 5% retained
• Bad reasons for unequal splits: "I had the idea" / "I started earlier" / "I raised money" / "I launched first" / "I'm more experienced"

Output Format

Part 1: Module Content

• Why co-founder failure is the #1 startup killer at YC
• The 3 qualities to look for (stress tolerance, aligned goals, complementary trajectory)
• Michael Seibel's equity philosophy: generosity as strategic tool
• Vesting/cliff mechanics and why they protect everyone
• Pre-PMF breakup guidelines with specific percentages

Part 2: Apply to Your Situation

• Co-founder status: solo / searching / paired?
• If paired: equity split and vesting structure in place? Worked under stress together?
• Have you explicitly discussed goals, work expectations, CEO authority?
• Any unspoken resentments building? When was the last frank 1-on-1?

Part 3: Interactive Workbook (AskUserQuestion)

• Ask questions ONE AT A TIME — do not list all questions at once
• Use AskUserQuestion tool for each question
• After each answer, give 1-2 sentence feedback connecting to the module's framework
• Provide multiple choice options where appropriate to make it easier to answer
• After completing all questions, generate a synthesis:

- Overall readiness score (1-10) for this module's topic - Top strength identified from answers - Top gap identified from answers - One specific action item

• Save completed workbook to knowledge/yc-startup-school/module-3-workbook.md

Questions to ask interactively:

1. Name 3 people you'd want as co-founder — have you actually asked them? (Not assumed they're unavailable)
2. Describe a stressful situation with your potential co-founder. How did they handle it?
3. Have you explicitly discussed: why you both want to start, what success looks like, how hard you'll work?
4. What's your current equity split — could each co-founder stay motivated in year 3 when things are hard?
5. Do you have 4-year vesting with 1-year cliff in place for ALL founders including yourself?
6. Is your founding team the minimum number to build, ship, and learn?
7. Which bad reasons (idea / earlier / raised / launched) have you used to justify your split?
8. When did you last have a frank 1-on-1 with your co-founder about how the relationship is going?

References

• ${CLAUDEPLUGINROOT}/skills/yc-3-building-your-founding-team/references/keys-to-successful-co-founder-relationships.md — Catheryn Li & Divya Bhat (YC)
• ${CLAUDEPLUGINROOT}/skills/yc-3-building-your-founding-team/references/co-founder-equity-mistakes-to-avoid.md — Michael Seibel (YC Group Partner)
• ${CLAUDEPLUGINROOT}/skills/yc-3-building-your-founding-team/references/how-to-find-a-co-founder.md — Harj Taggar (YC Group Partner)