FounderA founder whose product has no steady paying customers yet

When I need someone to carry this with me, I want to pick the right person and set the terms early, so a relationship that sours later does not take the company with it.

Khi tôi cần một người cùng gánh, tôi muốn chọn đúng người và thoả thuận đúng cách từ đầu, để một quan hệ hỏng về sau không kéo theo cả công ty.

Job context

Who: A solo founder who has hit their limit
When: Before splitting equity, usually too late
Trigger: A week of turning down opportunities for lack of hands
Situation: This decision is harder to reverse than almost any other the company will make
Constraints: Cannot pay salary, so equity is the only offer

Does not know how they behave when things are hard
High
Everyone is easy to work with while it is still exciting.
Root cause: The quality that matters most only appears in conditions that have not happened yet
Splitting equity before knowing who contributes what
High
A ratio decided in week one and binding for a decade.
Root cause: Equity splits once while contribution unfolds over time
Afraid to discuss the break-up scenario
High
Raising it while enthusiastic sounds like distrust.
Root cause: The most necessary conversation is the hardest to open
The best people already have good jobs
Medium
The most available person is often the one with the fewest options.
Root cause: Unpaid equity only appeals to those with little to lose
There is no way to trial it
Medium
A small joint project is nothing like working together when the money runs out.
Root cause: The real conditions cannot be reproduced in a trial

A solution is not the same thing as a product — a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

Equity with vesting
Product
The standard protection, still splitting the ratio before contribution is known.
Run a small project together first
Behaviour
The best available test, and it cannot reproduce the hard part.
Talk to people who worked with them before
Behaviour
The most reliable source, and few take the trouble.
Write down who decides what
Workaround
Founders draft the governance no template provides.
Hire instead of taking a co-founder
Behaviour
Reversible, and it does not buy the commitment of someone carrying it too.

Choosing well requires knowing how they behave under strain, which can only be learned after choosing.
Why existing solutions fail: Every piece of advice says to work together before committing, and a small project without real stakes does not reveal what needs revealing.
Potential opportunity: Staged commitment, where each stage opens after genuinely getting through something hard together.
Templates handle incorporation and exit; the middle — contribution drifting apart over years — has no mechanism.
Why existing solutions fail: Equity is a one-way legal instrument designed not to move, the very property that makes it unable to track a changing relationship.
Potential opportunity: A scheduled contribution review, so raising the issue is not anyone's initiative.