An Exploratory Analysis of the Characteristics and Prerequisites of an Appropriate Business Partner in the Early Stage of Start-up Business.

Abstract

This study shows the overall selection criteria which need to be considered while selecting a co-founder and founding team member in the early stage of a start-up business which includes characteristics and prerequisites. Most of the start-up business fails due to conflict and miscommunication among co-founder's caused by inappropriate selection at the founding stage of the start-up business which can be recovered by educating the start-up entrepreneurs with the help of Elite Co-founder theory. This research will propose the Elite Co-founder’s theory for Entrepreneurial academic purpose and Elite co-founder model for real-world start-up co-founder selection process. Based on both academic and business demand for co-founder problems in a start-up, this Elite Co-founder model was created with three brain systems of intuition are head, brain, heart (Soosalu et al., 2019). Co-founder conflicts are the main reason behind every aspect of start-up business failure backed by miscommunication and assumptions based on situations. ‘’With the long hours it takes to get a start-up off the ground, you’ll spend more time with your co-founder than your spouse’’ (Bornstein, 2017). The constructivist grounded theory of Elite Co-founder is designed and developed to support the Elite Co-founder model and it's is a one-page template contains all the essential and critical characteristics and prerequisites required for the co-founder candidate for a start-up (Alvarez et al., 2010). Overall, the eligibility check consists of evaluation methodology between a founder and co-founder profile to check the similarity rate / complementary rate. If the co-founder candidate scores above 52% in similarity rate / complementary rate, then they would be preferred candidates with optimum eligibility to work in a start-up business as a co-founder, interviewed, and graded by the founder of that start-up with the help of Elite Co-founder model. The results achieved by doing the co-founder evaluation test, is fully up to the founder intuition, knowledge, belief, skills, character, thoughts, requirements, and expectations (Pérez and Canino, n.d.).