Co-Founder Relationships: Vision Alignment

Today I’m sharing my own story of starting a business and running into co-founder vision misalignment.

Founder: Myself, Cameron Napoli

Story summary: I started a language learning company Umi, in 2022, and went through a co-founder separation early in the company’s life.

Actionable insight below 👇

Company Inception 🚀

In January 2022, I quit my full-time job to work on a startup idea that had been eating away at me. I wanted to build a language learning app to get to fluency. After using Duolingo to learn Spanish for years, a trip to Colombia made me realize it didn't prepare me for real-world conversations.

I teamed up with two fellow language learners that I met online through the YC co-founder match platform. We were working remotely from three different timezones: SF, NY, and London.

The three of us started by building an MVP to teach foreign language with real-world YouTube videos. After several months, we launched and monetized the product. We saw our first internet dollar, and I gotta say that felt great!

Co-founder Woes 😥

The glow of success soon wore off, and we realized our business had some flaws. We were having trouble scaling our solution, and we weren’t sure our product direction was correct.

During this period of turmoil, I noticed that the other technical co-founder, lets call him Alex for anonymity, wasn’t doing his best work. At the time, I didn’t make a fuss. I’m a pretty big people-pleaser, so I generally don’t like to stir the pot. However I should have definitely voiced my concerns since I was fairly frustrated and felt like I was carrying a lot of the work load. The decrease in Alex’s work quality was just a symptom of other underlying problems.

At the inception of the company, we had discussed our visions for the business. Alex had a different vision and goals for the business than me and the other co-founder. The other co-founder and I both were determined to solve the language learning problem, but Alex expressed that he was motivated by the outcome of a billion dollar company exit.

I was certainly also motivated to start a successful business, but I prioritized solving the language learning problem over pivoting to an easier idea. I don’t think that I was right and he was wrong.

There are different paths to success. There are businesses that are successful by sticking to a problem for a long time. There are also businesses that are successful by pivoting multiple times to get to success. However in our case, our difference in vision created a misalignment that constantly pulled us in different directions. It was incredibly frustrating at times.

These visionary differences ultimately led to Alex leaving the business. He decided that he wanted to abandon language learning for a different path. I don’t fault him since the language learning space is difficult to succeed in, but we managed to continue the business and it’s still growing to this day.

I also ultimately left Umi in 2023 due to completely unrelated reasons, but I learned a lot from the experience and value it greatly.

Takeaways 🧘‍♂️

It’s important to be aligned on vision and strategy in a startup. Without that, it feels like a ship without a north star.

I’d also say it’s important to over-communicate and align expectations. It’s easy to get upset with your co-founder, so make sure to always let them know what you need and expect.

Actionable insight: Don’t underestimate differences in vision.

Thanks for reading! Want to tell your startup story? 👉 Shoot me a message