Gloria Lin’s Founder Dating Playbook provides a detailed and meticulous five-step process for finding the right co-founder. Lin, drawing from her experience at Flipboard and Stripe, emphasizes the importance of a deliberate and thorough approach to avoid common co-founder issues that can lead to startup failures. The process begins with networking within entrepreneurial communities to identify potential partners. This is followed by exploratory conversations to assess shared interests and roles. Lin suggests treating the co-founder search like hiring executives, taking the time to make informed decisions.

The playbook also advocates for a two-week prototyping phase, where potential co-founders collaborate on a project to assess compatibility and passion for a specific industry or idea. Lin believes that hands-on experiences during this stage can reveal valuable insights. Central to Lin’s process is the Co-founder Questionnaire, a comprehensive set of 50 questions across six categories. This questionnaire, co-created with fellow founders, allows for a thorough exploration of compatibility and expectations. Lin emphasizes the flexibility in timing when introducing the questionnaire, tailored to the unique needs of the co-founder search process.

Lin shares insights on the questionnaire’s evolution, its role in aligning values, and the importance of vulnerability in fostering a strong co-founder relationship. She advises custom-tailoring the questionnaire, maintaining independence in answering, and reconvening to discuss responses thoroughly. In the final step, Lin discusses the decision to commit and make the co-founder relationship official. She emphasizes the need for personal runway and taking a leap of faith. Lin shares her own experience of recognizing the right co-founder through the questionnaire and highlights the ongoing commitment required to nurture the relationship. Overall, Lin’s Founder Dating Playbook provides a structured guide for entrepreneurs seeking to establish a solid foundation for successful and enduring co-founder relationships.