Covenant Foundry: Finding Christian Co-founders
Recently, I ran a survey to evaluate the need for helping Christians to find like-minded co-founders.
I have been working on a side project with a friend: launching Jobfolio, a simple job management app for the trades. He brought the idea and his business experience; I jumped in and built out the app. However, both of us were new to the startup biz, and neither of us had a strong marketing game. It turns out that’s important.
When I decided to give entrepreneurship a shot, I was already inclined to look for a partner. I’m not an ideal customer (because I hate spending money), which makes it hard to find good ideas. And I have an abysmally small network, which makes validating ideas hard. Other people are good at marketing (or have ideas) and need help with implementation.
The Bible both encourages and cautions about partnerships: two are better than one, but we should not partner equally with someone who doesn’t share our commitment to Christian values.
There are a few platforms (like Y-Combinator’s) for finding a co-founder, but none that I found that are geared towards matching Christians with similar values. Is there a need here? I ran a survey to find out.
The Results are In
I mentioned above that I have an “abysmally small network.” After distributing the survey to that network, I got a total of 15 responses. I am not a statistician, but I’m pretty sure the sample size should be larger. But I’ll take what I can get!
The highlights, summarized and paraphrased:
- Are you currently a founder?
- Want to be (8)
- Yes (7)
- Are you interested in finding a Christian co-founder?
- Yes (11)
- Maybe (2)
- No (2)
- What are the most important qualities of a co-founder?
- Shared Christian values
- Complementary skills and strengths
- Similar vision and goals
- How do your Christian values show up in your business practices?
- Integrity
- Giving a framework for making decisions about every area of the business
- Which features of a co-founder matching service would be most valuable?
- A community of like-minded entrepreneurs
- Detailed profiles of potential co-founders
- Conversation starters to help evaluate a potential match
- Do you have any concerns about such a service?
- Spam
- Low-quality applicants
- Different ideas about what “Christian values” actually mean
- How likely would you be to use a service like this?
- On the fence (7)
- Very likely (5)
- Somewhat likely (2)
- Somewhat unlikely (1)
Analysis
The survey was intentionally vague about what such a service might involve - partly because I wanted to let the survey results shape the outcome. And indeed they did: the basic ideas were there - yes, people liked the idea of finding a co-founder; and finding someone who is actually a good match is key. But a directory of profiles (the core of my original idea) wasn’t as important as the community component.
I ran across a relevant X thread while waiting for the results to roll in, and this too helped give some perspective to the problem: It’s important to have a good, established relationship before embarking on a venture together as co-founders.
A profile directory doesn’t solve this problem on its own. When you find a potential co-founder, you still need to get to know each other, and maybe work on a project together, to make sure you’re really compatible.
Proposal
Instead of starting with “how can we build a great app for this,” let’s start with the question “how can we make Covenant Foundry a great community for this?”
I have a few ideas:
- A #find-a-cofounder channel to the Covenant Foundry discord where you can share a profile with your skills, experience, and Christian testimony if you’re interested in matching up with a co-founder
- Opt-in prompted conversations (either in group settings or in one-on-one “coffee chats”) around specific aspects of business, the faith, partnerships, etc.
- Invest in some better SEO to help other Christian founders find the community
I’d love to hear your suggestions, too. Join us at Covenant Foundry!