The offer usually reaches me as a file: a financial model, a presentation, and projections for three or five years. The first thing I do is not open it. Not out of disdain for the numbers, but because I know the numbers will tell me what has passed, and I want to know first who is going to make what comes next.
Why I begin with the person
A company in its early years is neither assets nor contracts but a sequence of decisions made by a human being under pressure. The financial model does not show how that human being behaves when he makes a mistake, when a shortcut tempts him, or when he needs to say “I do not know.” These moments, not the numbers, are what decide whether the company survives.
That is why I say my measure of a person has two parts and no third: integrity and competence. Integrity first, because competence without integrity becomes organised danger. Competence second, because integrity without competence becomes good intentions that do not build a company.
The questions I ask in the first meeting
I ask about the last hard decision he made, how he made it, and whom he consulted. The answer tells me whether he decides alone or decides by a system.
I ask about a mistake that cost him something real, and what he changed afterwards. Whoever cannot find a single mistake in his story either never took a risk or cannot see his own mistakes, and neither makes a partner.
I ask who runs the company if he is away for a month. If the answer is “no one,” I am looking at a business of one person rather than an entity. That does not mean I refuse. It means the first thing we would do together is build what allows him to be away.
And I ask about the previous partner, if there was one, and why they parted. The way a person talks about a former partner says more about him than anything he says about himself.
Numbers describe what has passed. The person is who makes what comes next.
Then I open the file
After that I read the numbers, and I read them seriously. But I read them with a different eye: I do not ask whether these projections are possible, I ask whether this person is the one who can achieve them. And I look for the real ceiling of the business and its source: is it the size of the market, the capacity of the team, or a regulatory constraint that no one can change?
And I check one last thing: can I reach an understanding with the owner if we disagree? Because disagreement is certain to come, and no clause in a contract fixes a failure to understand each other.
What this means for a founder
If you are a founder thinking about a partner, know that the best thing you can bring to the first meeting is not an elegant deck but clarity about how you decide, honesty about what you do not know, and a real readiness to delegate. A number can be improved with work. The way a person thinks is not changed by a contract.
And if we do not understand each other in the first meeting, that is answer enough for both of us, and no one loses anything by it.
