---
title: "Ben Horowitz's 4 Principles for Choosing a Co-founder"
section: "Team"
sectionId: "team"
date: "2026-06"
---

*Based on remarks by Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, at Startup Grind (Feb 2014).*

## 1. Don't let anxiety drive your decision

The early days of a startup come with a specific kind of fear, and it pushes people toward bad decisions:

> "You're like, 'Oh my god, what if this doesn't work?'… Your guts are boiling, you're feeling very uneasy. And so there's a tendency to grab the closest cofounder you can find to say, 'Okay it's not just me now. Whew!' That's a big mistake."

Choosing a co-founder to relieve the discomfort of going it alone is choosing for the wrong reason. The decision should be made on its own merits, not as anxiety relief.

## 2. Be wary of going into business with friends

Horowitz cites John D. Rockefeller:

> "A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."

Friendship is generally a bad reason to pick someone as a co-founder. It's a useful signal, but it isn't a substitute for evaluating whether the partnership itself will work.

## 3. Work with people you've known for a while and truly respect

Horowitz contrasts two models of how a group comes together: The Beatles, who formed organically among people who already knew and respected each other, versus The Monkees, who were assembled by a record company.

> "The Monkees were actually pretty successful for a little while but there was something just fundamentally inauthentic about them… You are generally better off being The Beatles than The Monkees. Work with people who you've known for a while, respect, and feel like you can be teammates with for a long, long time."

A founding team assembled for convenience rather than grown out of an existing relationship tends to lack the durability you need over years of working together.

## 4. Split equity equally, and settle who's CEO upfront

On equity:

> "If you're not willing to equally split the company from an equity standpoint with your founders, that's probably a mistake."

On leadership, Horowitz generally won't fund startups without a clear, single CEO:

> "When you choose to share command, it's because you can't agree with your cofounder who should run the company. But everybody in the company is going to suffer because of that — you don't have clear command and decisions have to get made twice."

Shared command is usually a symptom of an unresolved disagreement, not a workable structure in its own right.

Source: @StartupGrind (Feb 2014)