How long does it take to find a cofounder? What the numbers say

Search this question and you'll find confident answers: one to three months, three to six. We couldn't trace any of them back to data. No platform or survey we found publishes how long a cofounder search takes from start to finish.

What does exist is a few detailed accounts from founders who wrote down how long theirs took, and some rules of thumb from people who have watched a lot of teams form. Together they show which parts of the search are quick and which aren't, which is more useful than an average would be.

What the numbers say

Meeting people can be quick, and so can a first project. What takes months is the testing, and before that, finding someone worth testing.

Where the time goes

Meeting people: days to weeks

This depends on where you look. A message to a former colleague can get an answer the same day. A Startup Weekend puts you in a team within a weekend. On a matching platform the first conversations come as fast as you reach out and people reply; on Foundinity, the people you see are already ranked by compatibility on multiple dimensions around who you are and how you work.

Finding someone worth testing: weeks to months

Nobody measures this stage, but in every account we found it's the longest. You have first calls, most of which go nowhere, and you keep going. The Whalesync founders each met dozens of people before they met each other. Gloria Lin, who wrote up her search for First Round Review, had one candidate who didn't get past a couple of coffee chats.

Testing: two weeks to four months

Lin prototyped with candidates in blocks of about two weeks, and worked with her eventual cofounder for four months before committing. Whalesync ran a six-week trial. Steve Blank suggests an intense project together followed by a trial period of about 30 days. Sean Murphy's rule of thumb, written in 2010, is three to nine months of projects that get harder each time for someone you met at an event, and three to six months for someone a friend introduced.

Deciding

This can take a day, or it can drag on indefinitely. In a follow-up post, Murphy argued that an open-ended evaluation of six to twelve months is a mistake, and that a pair should give themselves 90 days to get to revenue with the simplest product they can sell.

Why it often takes longer than it should

Most of the lost time goes on people who were never going to be a fit, and you only find out after weeks of calls. Hours and timing are worth settling first. If one of you wants to go full-time this year and the other means "eventually", good calls won't fix it. Ask on the first call.

Matches that nobody follows up are another leak. Foundinity time-boxes each match for this reason: when you match, a 10-day clock starts, so the conversation happens while you're both still interested.

The third is skipping the trial. Without real work together, the decision rests on how the calls felt, and that's an easy decision to put off.

How to shorten it

• Write down your must-haves before the first call, and ask about hours and timing in that call.
• Keep several conversations going at once instead of one at a time.
• Agree the length and goal of any trial before it starts, as the Whalesync founders did.
• Set the date you'll decide by on the first day of the trial.
• Use a platform that tells you something about how a person works before you meet. On Foundinity, the compatibility breakdown shows where the two of you differ, so the first call can start with those topics.

For the full process, from working out what you need to deciding, see our guide on how to find a cofounder.