This one is really easy to write.
Every year I write down the top influences in my life. And for the past 3 years Helena has consistently made that list.
I feel really lucky to say that. I know enough founders that don't have this kind of a relationship with their co-founders. So I know that what we have is not to be taken for granted.
In some ways, our story is the quintessential SF story. One where the co-founders also live together and are really good friends.
A lot of people have asked me "isn't that too much?" I didn't think so at the time, but I will admit it was intense at times and it probably doesn't make sense for everyone.
I learned from this that setting boundaries is very important. And once we figured that out, it was great. I think this worked for so long because we were both extremely committed to the company. I don't think this could have worked if you aren't deeply aligned in that sense.
But enough about that.
This is the story of how we met. I wanted to put this out there for anyone that is looking for a co-founder in case it helps. Don't be discouraged - it's really hard. I think we got lucky, but maybe you can be too if you know what you're looking for.
Chapter 1: Co-founder dating
When I first quit my job in Feb 2022, I had no idea what I was doing.
I started by co-founder dating all the typical personas of a great co-founder. My roommate who was also obssessed with startups. My best friend from middle school who worked at two YC companies.
I didn't really know what I was looking for at the time, but I knew that I wanted to work on climate. And very quickly I realized that it wasn't going to work out if my co-founder wasn't similarly obssessed.
So then I changed my approach - I would let go of my expectations of starting a company and instead focus on building myself up in climate. This meant joining communities, building a network, and reading a ton to bring myself up to speed.
What was interesting was that I knew rationally that the most probable outcome from doing this was joining a company, but I still did everything with the intensity of a founder.
After a fateful late-night kitchen counter conversation with Anand, this is what I resolved:
Whatever I land on next, I want to have so much conviction that I could have started the company. I want to believe that this is the most important problem to be solving in climate, and that this team would solve it
It's funny because looking back on it, I think this was the first of many jedi mind tricks that I learned to pull on myself. This, turns out, is a really important founder skill.
For the next month, I would operate as if I were a founder while knowing I was not. What I spent most of April doing:
- Identify interesting problems & companies working on them
- Look up their competitors & understand history of industry
- Throw up a landing page as if I were a competitor and interviewing would-be customers
Chapter 2: Solo founder
After doing this for a bit, I thought to myself "I think I can be a founder - I'm basically already doing it!"
But I couldn't shake this feeling that I still needed a co-founder. I had worked hard to dispel many of myths and self-limiting beliefs (i.e. "you can't do this because you have no network in climate" -> built one by networking) so I figured I'd give this one a shot as well.
I sat with it for a weekend and knew it wasn't going to work. I had too many blindspots and if I were really serious about maximizing the chances of success I knew I'd need a partner in crime.
So I made a note for what to look for in a co-founder. "No more frivolous coffee chats" I told myself. This might take a while, so I need to be very intentional about it. This is the only thing that matters right now, and I'm going to pop the question as the first thing to anyone that I meet.
Here was the checklist:
- Cares about climate -> Ironically I actually preferred someone who didn't know a lot because I wanted to learn & grow with them
- Gives me energy -> Inspired by Daniel Gross's thinking around this
- Serial entrepreneur -> Painfully aware of my own blindspots, I wanted not only someone that had better blindspots but also someone I can learn from
- In a similar stage of life -> Nothing against people who have kids, etc. but I wanted an "all-in" experience. I also didn't want to work with people fresh out of college who hadn't had a significant working experience yet.
Knowing that I had set the bar really high, I told myself that I needed to get started ASAP because it might take 6-8 months to find someone like this.
On May 1st, 2022, I put down my journal and set my intention to find this person.
Chapter 3: Figma friends
Right before resolving to find a co-founder, I was catching up with a college friend that was looking to start a company as well over lunch.
When he asked me about my interests, I told him everything. Carbon markets. Using crypto to accelerate climate finance. Regenerative finance.
It was incredibly niche, but he told me he actually met someone a few weeks ago that was talking his ear off about similar things. When I asked who, he said he wasn't sure but passed along something that she shared with him.
It was a Figma file, and it was huge. When I tried to open it on my phone at the taqueria, it zoomed into something that made no sense out of context. I decided to check it out later, but then completely forgot about it when I got home.
2 weeks later, on May 2nd I was poking around an online Discord community when I saw it again. Someone who had just joined the Discord server asked for resources to learn more, and Helena responded with a link to her Figma file.
When I opened it on my monitor, my brain exploded. It was like a Jimmy Neutron brain blast moment.
The Figma file was a mindmap of all the players in the carbon markets, their incentives, and how money flows throughout it. In addition, it mapped out all the players in the emerging crypto x carbon market space (regenerative finance) which maybe 200 people in the world were thinking about at the time.
At the top of the file, she asked for collaborators so I went to town on it. I started leaving comments and notes all over. Embarssingly though, I didn't know how to use comments in Figma so I left everything as a sticky note, effectively doubling the size of the file.
20 minutes into this indulgent streak, Helena logged on to the file. She must have gotten a million notifications about someone editing the file. She told me later that she had asked hundreds of people to collaborate on this file, and that I was the first one that actually contributed to it.
Her cursor floated towards mine and started talking (something I also didn't know you could do!). We started chatting in Figma using these disappearing messages, and eventually took the conversation to Twitter where we could actually see past messages.
We realized we were both in SF, so we decided to meet up in person at The Center.
After we got intros out of the way, I popped the question:
Are you looking for a co-founder?
I didn't know this at the time either, but Helena also recently came out of some co-founder dating experiences that didn't work out and also resolved to be a solo founder.
After a short pause, she said she'd be open to it. Score. I can work with that.
We chatted for hours that day, and it became pretty clear to me that she checked all the boxes. I went home that day thinking "How crazy is that that the first person you popped this question to also happens to check all the boxes?" It seemed too good to be true.
That was a Monday, and we hung out a few more times that week on Tuesday and Wednesday. By the end of it, the choice seemed obvious and I really wanted to say "yes let's do it!"
But it was little more complicated than that.
Chapter 4: You're either on the train or not
I was thinking about moving to NYC at the time and ending long distance with Chaya.
Chaya was still working for a NYC-based at the time, and the thinking was that it made sense for me to move to NYC since I can work from anywhere. I was always curious about living in NYC, and it seemed like a no-brainer as long as the move wouldn't stop me from pursuing what I wanted to.
So months ago I had booked a ticket to go to NYC for 2 weeks on May 5th to see if I can see myself in NYC. The goal was to meet as many people as I can in the climate community there and maybe do some light apartment hunting as well.
I told Helena all of this, and on May 5th I flew out to NYC with an unshakeable feeling that either way I was about to make a life-changing decision.
We continued to chat when I got to NYC, and one thing that struck me deeply was that she was going to start this company with or without me.
This reminded me of a conversation I had a few months prior with another founder that I really respected. We were talking about the most important traits of a founder that predict how successful they might be. His answer stood out to me.
Inevitability
He explained that it's the feeling that the person is an unstoppable force of nature and will do something regardless of whether you are in for the ride. The question is not whether the train will leave the station, but whether you want to be on it.
When I realized that this described Helena very well and that she checked all the boxes, I knew I was going to ultimately regret passing up this opportunity. Timing is really hard when it comes to working with good people, and basically impossible for exceptional talent.
So after thinking about it for a day and running it by Chaya, I said yes. We signed the incorporation papers to officially become a company on Friday May 9th, and we were in back-to-back fundraising calls the following Monday.
Epilogue
Looking back, it was crazy that we decided to start a company the same week we met. Even knowing how everything turned out, I still think it was crazy.
While I wouldn't recommend anyone to do this, I do recommend the following:
- Developing a checklist and strong sense of what you are looking for before you start looking
- Being hyperintentional about looking for a co-founder
- Trusting your gut and taking a risk when someone like that comes along (even if it might feel like bad timing)
They say starting a company with someone is like getting married. If that's the case, I loved my shotgun wedding.