In this episode, Nick and Julian unpack the mechanics of co-founder relationships—drawing from their nine years of building two companies together, Julian’s family business growing up, and the hard-won lessons they’ve learned about trust, equity, and governance.
They introduce a practical framework: the “four buckets” of potential co-founders (family, friends, professional colleagues, and strangers), each with distinct trade-offs. They get vulnerable about their own equity negotiations—including the over-engineered spreadsheet they now find embarrassing—and share why Nick voluntarily gave Julian more equity after their first year working together.
Whether you’re searching for a co-founder, evaluating a potential partnership, or trying to strengthen an existing one, this episode offers a rare, honest look at one of startup life’s most consequential relationships.
Key Topics
The Four Buckets Framework: Family, friends, professional colleagues, and strangers—each source of co-founders comes with inverse trade-offs between trust depth and ease of exit
How Nick and Julian Met: Working at Pose, a startup where they were paid to “de-risk” their future co-founder relationship
Trust as Business Infrastructure: Why high-trust environments are force multipliers for execution speed
Family Business Dynamics: Julian’s experience watching his father’s restaurant partnership with his uncles dissolve—and why family businesses are more common in high-corruption countries
Legal Documentation as Trust-Building: The counterintuitive argument that contracts enhance rather than erode trust (”legal debt” vs. tech debt)
Equity Structure and Vesting: Why every co-founder arrangement needs a vesting schedule with a cliff, and how to think about early work vs. future value
The Equity Correction Story: How Nick voluntarily gave Julian additional equity after seeing him fully commit—and why Pam (Julian’s wife) still gets emotional about it
Co-CEO Dynamics: Why Nick sees co-CEO arrangements as a counter signal, and Julian’s evolved take
Co-Founder vs. Early Employee: What actually distinguishes the two (hint: it’s about risk tolerance and scope, not just timing)
Vulnerability in Business: Nick’s openness about therapy improving his co-founder relationship
Timestamps
- [00:00] Introduction: The co-founder question Nick gets asked constantly
- [00:59] How Julian ended up at Pose—serendipity vs. intentionality
- [02:39] Why this question deserves deeper analysis
- [03:22] Going to first principles: categorizing potential co-founders
- [04:50] The Four Buckets Framework introduced
- [05:03] Bucket Three: Professional colleagues (how Nick and Julian met)
- [06:19] The “two Julians” confusion at Pose
- [08:42] Advice for young founders: go work on things and meet people
- [09:29] Julian: You also learn about yourself
- [09:33] Exploring other co-founder configurations
- [11:16] Pedigree and baseline trust with strangers
- [11:57] Trust mechanics: inertia and ease of exit
- [12:53] The efficiency of “at-will” business relationships
- [14:09] Julian’s family restaurant story: when family business goes wrong
- [16:09] Why family businesses are more common in high-corruption countries
- [17:50] Nick’s “boy scout” reputation with legal documentation
- [19:12] “Legal debt”—like tech debt, but for contracts
- [19:46] Refocusing on startup co-founder structure
- [20:22] Governance, equity, and vesting schedules explained
- [24:18] The real story: how Nick and Julian structured their first equity split
- [27:45] The over-engineered whiteboard algorithm for equity allocation
- [29:36] Nick gives Julian more equity—Pam’s emotional reaction
- [31:42] Why aligning co-founders matters culturally
- [33:33] The case for 50/50 splits
- [33:53] Solo founders: a future episode topic
- [34:09] Hot takes on the co-CEO phenomenon
- [36:03] Counterpoint: 50/50 as a similar counter signal
- [36:56] The importance of a clear final decision-maker
- [38:36] Equity vs. control: a distinction worth making
- [39:53] When business partnerships feel like marriages
- [41:40] The emotional vulnerability of co-founder relationships
- [42:44] Nick on therapy and its impact on their partnership
- [43:39] Communicating bad news requires trust
- [44:57] Trust as a quantifiable business accelerant
- [46:28] “Trust is a friction reduction agent”
- [48:00] Legal documents as trust-building mechanisms
- [50:14] Co-founder vs. early employee: where’s the line?
- [52:45] Regulatory considerations for 25%+ ownership
- [53:51] Functional distinctiveness as a co-founder marker
- [56:30] Solo founding: scary and overwhelming
- [56:46] The loneliness of CEO responsibilities
- [57:44] The Amsterdam hotel story: bearing bad news alone
- [1:00:05] Nothing kept longer than 24 hours
- [1:01:17] Wrap-up and sign-off
- [1:01:40] Why the podcast is called “Net Good”
Key Quotes
“Dustin Rosen paid us to de-risk our co-founder relationship.”
— Nick, on the value of meeting your co-founder while working at someone else’s company
“When it does happen, it bleeds into everywhere in your life. You cannot separate your work life from your personal life anymore... I didn’t see my cousins at Christmas a couple years because of these fights.”
— Julian, on family business conflicts
“It’s the equivalent of tech debt, but legal debt.”
— Julian, on skipping legal documentation in family businesses
“Almost always the person that has done all that very valid, very difficult work is overvaluing the work they’ve done to date. And if they are truly bringing on a genuinely valuable co-founder, they are undervaluing all the stuff that’s going to happen in the future.”
— Nick, on equity allocation psychology
“I didn’t ask for it. You just showed up one day and you were like, hey, we should talk. And then you handed me a piece of paper... I’m not gonna say no, but thank you.”
— Julian, on Nick voluntarily granting him additional equity
“If someone, if you feel strongly about another human being enough to say, start this thing with me, walk away from your perfectly sane and good job and do this crazy thing with me—and if they are crazy enough and have enough trust in you to say yes—that 50-50 or whatever the even split is, is often the fastest, most aligned and most directionally accurate arrangement you can come to.”
— Nick
“A co-founder is somebody who is willing to—it doesn’t matter what it is, it doesn’t matter if it’s sweeping the floors in the office, I’m gonna do it if it has to be done.”
— Julian, on what distinguishes co-founders from employees
“Trust is a friction reduction agent.”
— Nick
“If I’m working on something and you’re interested in what I’m working on and the price is half of my ownership, I don’t give a shit, let’s go. Let’s go have some fun.”
— Nick, on partnership
Key Takeaways
The Four Buckets have inverse trade-offs: Family and friends offer deeper initial trust but are harder to exit; strangers are easy to walk away from but require trust built from scratch. Professional colleagues may be the sweet spot.
Working together before founding together is valuable: Nick and Julian spent nearly two years as colleagues at Pose before starting their first company. That time was essentially subsidized co-founder vetting.
Always use vesting schedules with cliffs: No matter what equity split you agree to, tie it to a four-year vesting schedule with a one-year cliff. Catastrophic co-founder problems will be visible in the first 12 months.
People overvalue past work and undervalue future work: The founder who’s been working alone for a year often over-weights that contribution relative to the years of work ahead.
50/50 is often the right answer: If you trust someone enough to ask them to quit their job and join you, nickel-and-diming over equity percentages may be wasted energy. Course correct later if needed.
Clear governance matters more than equity split: Having a designated final decision-maker (and documenting it) is more important than whether you’re 50/50 or 60/40.
Legal documentation builds trust: Going through the process of writing things down creates clarity and reduces future friction—it’s trust-enhancing, not trust-eroding.
Vulnerability is a business asset: Nick credits therapy with improving his co-founder relationship. The ability to share bad news quickly depends on trusting your partner won’t “crush you” for it.
Like what you heard? Share this episode with a founder who’s thinking about partnership.
Net Good is a podcast about building companies, making decisions, and trying to leave things better than we found them.
