The Stories Behind How Startup Co-Founders Met
Insight and inspiration from 10+ startup founders.
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Covered today:
The stories behind how startup co-founders met.
More on GTM for your eardrums.
More on GTM for your eyeballs.
Startups to watch.
Hottest GTM jobs of the week.
GTM industry events.
Having the right co-founder can determine the trajectory of your business. Conversely, having the wrong co-founder can also.
We took a sample from the GTMfund portfolio and are sharing the stories behind how co-founders met.
Whether you’re actively seeking a co-founder, might in future, appreciating your existing partner or celebrating your founders as a go-to-market leader, these serve as sources of insight and inspiration.
Let’s get into it.
The Stories Behind How Startup Co-Founders Met
Professional Colleagues
Company: PastSight
Co-Founders: Michael Hoffman and Cameron McCurdy.
How they met: Worked together at CB Insights on the GTM team.
Cameron: “Mike and I worked together at CB Insights for years on the GTM team, where he eventually became a VP of Sales and I was the Head of Enablement. A few years later when I was leaving my job at the time, I reached out to Mike to catch up and he told me about his vision for PastSight. Serendipitously my consulting background aligned with what he was doing in the win/loss space and I joined Mike as a co-founder.”
Company: Capchase
Co-Founders: Miguel Fernansez Larrea, Luis Basagoiti Marqués, Ignacio Moreno Pubul and Przemek Gotfryd.
How they met: Worked together at an early stage startup and through an educational institution.
“Luis, Guli and Miguel worked together at an early stage startup and they each led different product and GTM teams. Miguel and Przemek met at Harvard Business School, first socially and then started working on Capchase. We started during the summer of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, so we didn't meet in person until 6 months after launching the business.”
Company: Demostack
Co-Founders: Jonathan Friedman and Aaron Hakim.
How they met: Founded a previous company together.
Jonathan: “We founded a previous company together called Reactful where we actually had a really great demo and the reason was that he really wanted to invest in it and I wasn’t sure. Eventually we did and the demo was memorable to people 10 years after we sold our company. It was part of the reason why we founded Demostack, later knowing how big of a problem that was for us.”
Company: CloseFactor
Co-Founders: Leena Joshi, Ben Cheung and Erik Buchanan.
How they met: Worked together at VMware on the same product team and through a startup acquisition.
Leena: “Ben and I met almost 15 years ago when we worked on the same product team at VMware. Ben met our third co-founder, Erik, when Ben's startup was being acquired by Microsoft and Erik (whose startup was acquired by Linkedin, and then got acquired by Microsoft). Our first few meetings as founders were in various Palo Alto libraries, along with Erik's one-year old, who for the most part was a "sleeping partner.”
Company: UserHub
Co-Founders: Patrick Rafferty and Silas Sewell.
How they met: Met during the formative years of another startup.
Patrick: “We met during the formative years of another startup (Reonomy). Silas was the principal engineer, and I was the Head of Product. We formed a friendship after working side-by-side through many late nights. I enjoyed building products with Silas, and I knew I wanted to work with him again. So, here we are!”
Company: WorkRamp
Co-Founders: Ted Blosser and Arsh Mand.
How they met: Met during a road trip to Tahoe while working at Box.
“We met each other on a road trip to Tahoe in 2011. We were both working at Box at the time, and were stuck in a traffic jam for eight hours. It was the start of a lifelong friendship and business partnership, leading to the founding of WorkRamp in 2015.”
Social Media
Company: Arrows
Co-Founders: Daniel Zarick and Benedict Fritz.
How they met: Met through Twitter, became friends and built projects together.
Daniel: “Benedict and I met through Twitter. We had been following each other back in 2012 through game design circles we were both in. Then when I moved back to Chicago in 2013, we decided we should finally meet in person. It turns out we lived just two blocks from each other and we became fast friends. Together over the years we've built joke iOS apps, worked on big client projects, participated in each other's weddings, and have now been building Arrows for around 5 years. I can't help but feel it's a superpower to have known, worked with and trusted someone for so long.”
Introduced by a Mutual Connection
Company: Keyplay
Co-Founders: Adam Schoenfeld and Andrew Rothbart.
How they met: Introduced by a VC.
Adam: “We were introduced by Tim Porter, a great VC at Madrona here in Seattle. I was just catching up with Tim and mentioned to him that I was starting to think about doing another startup and wanted to start networking with possible technical co-founders. Coincidentally, Tim had met Andrew recently about his interest to do a startup, so he connected us over email. We met for a walk on a lovely spring day. We had a very long conversation about life, personal values, business philosophy, and startup ideas. After that we decided to find a small side project we could work on together to see if we liked collaborating. The project was a blast. At that point I figured we would be off to the races and co-found something, but Andrew had a baby on the way and decided it wasn't quite the right time. We stayed in touch for several months... the baby arrived... Andrew's life normalized a bit... the stars aligned... and the rest is history. We are forever grateful to Tim for connecting us.”
Company: Esper
Co-Founders: Maleka Momand and Lilli O'Hara
How they met: Introduced through a mutual friend.
“We met through a mutual investor friend!”
Spouse or Partner
Company: Closinglock
Co-Founders: Andy White and Abigail Holloway White.
How they met: Andy and Abigail are spouses.
“In 2017, Abby was working at a real estate company when one of their home buyers nearly lost their life savings due to a spoofed email. After researching the problem with Andy, the two decided something needed to be created to protect home buyers. Andy's engineering background and Abby's real estate background made them a perfect pair to solve this massive problem.”
Educational Institution
Company: Default
Co-Founders: Nico Ferreyra and Victor Papyshev.
How they met: Met while in undergrad as co-captains of their university's Formula SAE team.
“Victor and Nico met while in undergrad as co-captains of their university's Formula SAE team, where they led a team of 35 students building a formula-style race car. They started working on their first software company shortly after, and eventually left to pursue building startups full-time. After building and selling products for a couple of years, they discovered a massive pain-point in the inbound sales workflow and went all-in on Default.”
Company: Row Zero
Co-Founders: Nick End and Breck Fresen.
How they met: Met in college on the cross country and track team.
Nick: “We met in college. He was a freshman when I was a senior and we were both on the Cross Country and Track Team at Carnegie Mellon. We stayed in touch after I graduated. Three years later when Breck was graduating, I was trying to get our first startup, Shoefitr, off the ground and needed a technical co-founder. It took 6 months of prodding and building interest before Breck quit his job at a high frequency trading firm and we went all-in on Shoefitr. After Shoefitr was acquired by Amazon, we both worked there before going our separate ways. Wanting to do another startup, Breck convinced me to join him and start building what is now Row Zero.”
Company: Pocus
Co-Founders: Alexa Grabell and Isaac Pohl-Zaretsky.
How they met: During the application to a class called Lean Launchpad.
Alexa: “I was at Stanford business school and he was at Stanford Engineering, but we actually met to apply to a class called Lean Launchpad where they help you incubate different startup ideas. I had this idea around unlocking data for go-to-market teams. I was co-founder dating, he was co-founder dating. I had four roommates at the time all at Stanford in the business school and everyone was trying to win over Isaac. It was like the Bachelor gone SaaS!”
👂 More for your eardrums:
Subscribe to The GTM Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
GTM 95: Going to Market in a Single Platform Ecosystem (HubSpot): Insights from Arrows' Journey:
Daniel Zarick is the Co-Founder and CEO of Arrows, a collaborative customer onboarding tool built specifically for teams using HubSpot. With funding from Gradient Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, and GTMfund, Arrows. is well-positioned to become a major player in the HubSpot ecosystem.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts by searching “The GTM Podcast.”
👀 More for your eyeballs:
Google introduced AI Overviews. Previously an experiment in Search Labs, AI Overviews mark an evolution from the traditional list of links to a more intuitive and integrated approach, where AI-generated summaries offer a quick grasp of topics right at the top of search results. More on Overviews and Agents and their impact on go-to-market to come in The GTM Newsletter.
🚀 Startup to watch:
UserEvidence launched Research Content, a full-service offering that turns market research into original thought leadership content. This product launch enables B2B marketing teams to create original research thought-leadership / market-research long-form reports with survey panels at a fraction of the cost of analyst firms or agencies.
🔥 Hottest GTM jobs of the week:
Director of RevOps at Cube (NYC)
Head of Product Management at Cube (NYC, San Francisco or Toronto)
Content Marketer at Closinglock (Austin, TX)
Sales Development Representative at Vividly (Remote - US)
Enterprise Account Development Representative at Census (Denver, CO)
See more top GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.
🗓️ GTM industry events
Upcoming go-to-market events you won’t want to miss:
[June 4] Happy Customers Festival (Virtual): a free virtual event that demonstrates how to maximize HubSpot by integrating best-in-class apps. Dive deep into practical strategies that improve GTM activities across the entire customer lifecycle—marketing, sales, and customer success. Don’t miss this event if you’re looking to elevate your team’s performance with HubSpot.
[June 6] CRO Summit by Pavilion (Boston, MA): unlock new perspectives and tactics that can help you take a new approach to growth, understand your unit economics, and align with key stakeholders to elevate your business - and your career.
[October 14-16] GTM Summit by Pavilion (Austin, TX): a B2B SaaS conference for go-to-market executives. Bring your GTM leadership team to learn, get aligned and get ahead on planning your 2025 strategy.
That’s it, that’s all.
The startup stories range from professional colleagues, to social acquaintances, to mutual connections, to family. They ranged from knowing each other for 10+ years to have never met in person before.
There’s no “one size fits all” model for finding the right Co-Founder.
Enjoy the long weekend ahead for those who are in the US!
Barker ✌️