As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to try to make the topic of team issues a blogging topic of mine. This post concerns how to prevent a team break up. A great way to get founder issues and insecurities out in the open and in turn prevent founder breakups is to conduct a founder exercise I call “going to the movies.”
The idea behind the exercise is to tell the worst possible "nightmare" of the founding of the company gone wrong. An example illustrates the founder exercise -- imagine a date with the opposite sex. "going to the movies" involves imagining the story of things started to go badly and then becoming a date from hell. Imagine, what is the worst possible thing that could happen? Does the date throw their drink in your face because you picked the wrong movie? Do they chew overly buttered popcorn with their open and you storm out of the theatre? Do you lean in for a kiss and get slapped in the face?
You get the idea. Go through this exercise with your co-founders and discuss each other’s fears and limitations in the realm of the worst possible thing that could happen to your company. It’s a great way to get everyone’s issues out in the open early in a company’s history and prevent breakups down the road.
