Philosophy over function: How I found the right co-founders

(Guest post by Dan Shipton) When building a company, you may be tempted to seek out partners who solely compliment your skills, or lack thereof. If you aren’t a programmer, designer, writer or marketer, you may look for people who are. But choosing a co-founder isn’t just a matter of plugging in skill sets—there’s more…

Founder Friday is a weekly guest post written by a founder who is based in or hails from the Silicon Prairie. Each month, a topic relevant to startups is presented and founders share lessons learned or best practices utilized on that topic. February’s topic is how co-founders found each other. 

About the authors: Dan Shipton is the co-founder and CEO of Change, a point-of-sale app for the iPad created by BitMethod


When building a company, you may be tempted to seek out partners who solely compliment your skills, or lack thereof. If you aren’t a programmer, designer, writer or marketer, you may look for people who are. But choosing a co-founder isn’t just a matter of plugging in skill sets—there’s more to consider. Because co-founders spend hours [and hours] together and face endless decisions, you should also be on the same page when it comes to philosophy.

Before Neil Roberts, Igor Dobrosavljević and I founded BitMethod back in 2009, we realized we had a lot in common. Not just with our approach to development, but with our philosophy on design and business. As BitMethod turns five this year, I’ve been thinking about the path to here—of working together and building a solid team—and the shared values that started it all:

Tackle the tough stuff others won’t

From taking on our first big client project to deciding to pivot to Change full-time, we love taking on big, scary projects. For example, point-of-sale software has historically been poorly designed and complex. It presents many tough problems to solve, but we agree that those are the problems worth solving. If one of us was always scared of taking on these challenging projects, we would have never grown as a company and potentially never launched Change.

Build solutions, not gimmicks

We have never been fans of just building something for the sake of building it. We enjoy digging deep and identifying the underlying problems people need solved. Then we work backward from there. It cuts through the fluff, like novel trends and gimmicks, and allows us to focus on what’s truly important to our users. It also makes it easier for us to come to a consensus when deciding what to build next or who we should add to the team.

It’s all about the user

Some people want to make money. Some people want to create an emotional response. During those rough times or difficult decisions, you want to make sure you have someone there who is motivated by the same things you are. As I previously mentioned, we are all driven by solving real problems for real people. Occasionally, we build things for ourselves, but we get the most joy out of making someone’s daily life a little easier. 

Results are more important than tools

We all love shiny new tools, but we’ve never really let tools dictate how we build something. In other words, we don’t feel the need to use a shiny new saw, when a pair of scissors will work just fine. We try to take a very pragmatic approach to design and development. It all boils down to the end result. If it works, and works well, who cares if we didn’t get to use the bleeding-edge build of our favorite JavaScript library? Our users won’t notice.

Neil Roberts (left) and Dan Shipton (right) co-founded BitMethod with Igor Dobrosavljević in 2009.

The thing about philosophies is they can be difficult to put into words. Most of the time, they’re just feelings—instincts—that steer you toward certain processes, decisions and people, and away from others. Neil, Igor and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything, but we do when it counts.

Choosing a co-founder, or even that first hire, is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make for your company. It’s a decision beyond skill sets and resumes. Skills can always be learned. It’s about finding that right match—of personalities, of shared values—that will make the difference for the road ahead. 

 

Credits: Photos courtesy of Change. 

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

Get the latest news and events from Nebraska’s entrepreneurship and innovation community delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday.