Welcome to the Ramen Mafia guide to the cofounder dating. The purpose of this guide is to provide a repeatable process for you to efficiently run a successful cofounder dating process. This guide is particularly helpful in the context of Ramen Mafia where you have explicit knowledge that people are looking for cofounders. However, we've designed this guide to be helpful in any cofounder search process.

Table of contents

Mindset

The Process

1. Introductory meetings
2. Cofounder survey
3. Deep dive meetings
4. Project sprint
5. Extended work trial
6. Go/No Go

🧠 Mindset

• Cofounder dating has many similarities to normal dating. It's a complex, intangible process with a high bar for commitment. It's often a numbers game to discover the right fit.
• Don't get stuck on the idea. Ideas will surely evolve. Align on broader interests, complimentary skills, and problems to be solved. Dream together to make the idea work.
• What really matters is experience working together. Talking is not enough. Bias towards teaming up on small, rapid projects. You'll know quickly if there isn't a fit.

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⚙️ The Process

Note: We've decided to provide an opinionated approach to cofounder dating. It may not work for everyone but, given the ambiguous nature of the problem, we rather err on the side of being concrete and actionable than offering "it depends" advice.

At a high-level, we recommend the following process for finding a cofounder. The goal with our process is to enable efficient evaluation at the top of the funnel, enabling you to meet more people and train your model, and prioritize work experience to gauge cofounder fit.

1. Introductory meetings - share ideas and interests to gauge potential fit
2. Send cofounder survey - uncover disqualifiers and ask awkward but important questions