Seventy Percent In Is the Worst Place to Be

A founder this week asked me how much longer he should give his struggling co-founder. I couldn't give a time frame, but I gave a very clear strategy.

First, here's what the founder is asking:

1. Do I stay in the company I started?
2. How much more rope do I give my co-founder who keeps going off on his own island?
3. Do I take investor money knowing the above is unresolved?

He's maybe 70% in. And 70% in is the worst possible place to be.

Now, before I tell you my answer, here's the interesting thing.

A month earlier, I was talking to a different client about his marriage. You work with founders long enough and it stops just being about the startup. It becomes life coaching.

My client told me, "I'm not sure there's anything left in my marriage anymore."

I said the same thing to both founders.

"Dude, if you're out, be out. That's fine. Hard, but fine.

But until you're out, you need to act as if you are 100% in. Those are your only two options."

Anything less than 100% in is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It gets to the same place; the path is just uglier.

When you're 70% in, you stop having the hard conversations. You stop pushing on the things that matter. You paper over the cracks because you're already half out the door in your head. And then six months later you look around and the thing you were noncommittal about has rotted from the inside, and now you get to tell yourself "see, I was right to be skeptical."

You weren't right. You made it true.

I lived this myself. I broke up with my first wife three times before we got married. Every single time I broke it off, I got vertigo. I was a dumb 24yo kid and I genuinely thought that was the universe telling me I needed to marry her. So I did.

That entire marriage I was halfway out. Never did the hard work. Never really tried to make it work. Seventeen years with the wrong person is one hell of a price to pay to learn a simple lesson (though I did get two world-class kids out of it).

So whether it's your work partner or life partner, the same strategy applies.

• Have the fundamental conversations.
• Seek real resolutions. Don't paper over the hard shit.
• Commit fully — to the company, to the round, to the team, to the marriage, the work — or go do something else.

But pick.

The middle is not a strategy. It's just a slower way to lose.