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“Starting a company with your friends is a terrible idea!”
A community member gave this piece of advice to my friend and co-founder, Deepak Bala, at a Nasscom product conclave in Bangalore. Honestly, I’d probably need more than ten fingers to count the number of times I’ve heard versions of that advice over the years.
But here we are, more than a decade and two startups later, and I’m convinced that starting a company with your friends isn’t just possible—it can be incredibly rewarding. I get why people are concerned, though. Co-founder relationships are the backbone of any company. From sharing ownership to making critical decisions, everything hinges on the trust and respect between the founders.
I’ve seen companies crumble due to rocky co-founder relationships. But I got lucky to have got the chance to start a company early on with two of my closest friends, when we were still young, eager to experiment with tech, and more than willing to take risks to build something amazing.
Deepu (Deepak), GB (Srikrishnan), and I began our journey back in 2014. Deepu and I are childhood friends, GB and I went to college together–the three of us became tight-knit quite quickly. After we graduated, we went our separate ways and joined other companies, but the dream to build something together was always present. So years later, when we had a great idea for a product, we were very surefooted in our abilities, and didn’t think twice before taking the leap.
Knowing each other for years meant we had built a deep sense of trust and respect, which made our startup journey a lot easier.
Transitioning from friends to co-founders
I’m sure a lot of founders share the same concerns about their co-founders. “Are my co-founders as committed as I am? Why aren’t they pulling their weight? Am I the only one who really cares?” I have seen these thoughts poison even the strongest partnerships.
In our partnership, we are equals—each of us bring a unique blend of skills and a shared curiosity to build something from scratch that could grow into a world-class product.
When we first started out, the three of us handled it all—juggling tech, product, and business aspects of the startup. But after our company was acquired by Freshdesk (now Freshworks), and we spent four years working together there, we really began to understand our strengths and weaknesses. Those years strengthened our relationship as co-workers and co-founders, and we became one of Freshworks’ fastest-growing products. Our time there gave us more clarity on how different functions work collaboratively, while maintaining their autonomy.
That success gave us the confidence to start our second venture, Rocketlane. This time around, we learned to fill in the gaps that were jarring in our previous venture.
Each of us picked a function to lead. Deepu became the go-to for all things technology, GB took charge of the business side, and I took ownership of the product.
We still weigh in on each other’s domains, but we have a mutual understanding that the final decision would lie with the founder leading that function. We hope to bring this ideal into our teams as well. It’s common for different teams to have their conflicts—like between product and engineering, or sales and marketing. We want to ensure that each team member or leader has clear decision-making authority. This could encourage creative friction and healthy debates, while also preventing ongoing conflicts that could arise between teams.
However, there is a flip side to this approach. Each of us taking charge of a specific function means we also take full responsibility for the outcomes—whether good or bad. I’d be lying if I said the pressure doesn’t get to me at times, but there is comfort in knowing that I can always turn to my co-founders and my team for a fresh perspective, when in doubt.
When we were a smaller team at Rocketlane, every decision felt critical to our success. It was essential for us to be aligned on our goals so we could make sound decisions as function heads AND as Rocketlane as a whole. During those first couple of years, we recorded all our prospect calls and interviews, and it wasn’t just the three founders listening in—our entire team would tune in to grasp the reasoning behind our decisions. It also allowed us to brainstorm solutions together, ensuring that each of us could come to a decision that was strong and supported by the entire team. After all, we all need a reliable sounding board to navigate through life, don’t we?
Curiosity killed the cat… but satisfaction brought it back
The one thing that I truly believe in is that curiosity is at the core of every innovation. If the three of us weren’t so curious about what outcomes would arise if we built a company together, we wouldn’t have been here now. And I later discovered that we had built a team of curious people. Everyone seemed passionate about something outside of work, and the others were curious to learn more about their interests.
This led to the creation of our ‘Curiosity Sessions.’ It all started when Deepu developed a process for engineers to address P0 bug fixes. The on-call engineers were required to document where the issue originated and what caused the code to break. But if it was a major bug, Deepu began gathering the entire engineering team for a root cause analysis, digging deep to uncover the root of the problem and understand how it broke the code.
But soon, these curiosity sessions branched out to the other teams and started covering a much larger range of topics. While one person talked about the art of calligraphy, someone else talked about their experience running a family-owned restaurant. We learned something new from our fellow teammates every day!
Folks from all the teams tuned into these conversations and loved learning about new things. It also forged new friendships among people with the same interests, and I was glad it broke barriers between teams, bringing them all together.
For us, this was a significant win. These newly formed friendships encouraged everyone to be more open in sharing ideas across the team. As GB often says, ‘Good ideas come from everywhere.’ Before long, the marketing team was getting inputs for campaigns from across the organization, and engineers were collaborating with product marketers to understand customer pain points better.
I’ve got to give credit to Deepu for this one. He’ll likely remind me of it—and pester me about it—for the unforeseeable future. :)
How do you call your friend out in a professional setting?
From the start, we’ve always prioritised what’s best for the company, putting our biases aside to make sound decisions. But, of course, there have been moments when things didn’t go as planned, or when we disagreed with how something was handled.
But what’s a good friendship if you can’t be honest and tell each other the hard truths?
I remember getting some tough feedback from GB about eight years ago. Whenever we were in the middle of a serious conversation, he encouraged me to respond less negatively when I thought he was being illogical or wrong, as it often led him to disengage from our debates.
It made me stop and think. Change didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen, slowly but surely.
Disagreements are good
Shortly after founding our first company together, I learned something important about co-founder relationships: If you don’t know how to argue with your co-founders, you won't be able to keep the company alive for long.
Our first product together was Konotor, a mobile-first user engagement platform. The first year was smooth-sailing—we were all engrossed in building the core product, experimenting with features, and shipping them out. But even though we knew what to build, we hadn’t agreed on our vision for the product’s future or how we wanted to release it. Soon, we realized we couldn’t expand and provide value to our customers if we weren’t aligned.
This led to one of our most heated arguments as friends and co-founders. At the time, GB’s home was our makeshift company headquarters. We argued for four hours straight, interrupted only by GB’s mom bringing us snacks during tea time. I occasionally wondered what she made of our lengthy discussions—maybe she just saw it as part of the usual startup hustle.
That argument tested our personal and professional relationship, but the next day, all of us went about our work like nothing had happened. Once cooler heads prevailed, we reached a unanimous decision that was best for the company.
This proved something important: no matter our differences, we all had the company’s best interests at heart. Even when discussions got intense, it was never personal. For us, every day was a fresh start, and we never carried the previous day’s feelings into the next. We trusted and respected each other enough to understand that.
Switching our many hats
I believe a good coworker should know how to juggle various hats—whether as a friend, a leader, a confidante, or more. GB, Deepu, and I have our own collection of hats, including those of a friend and a co-founder. Over the years, we've mastered the art of switching between these roles so seamlessly that they’ve become intertwined.
We talk about work while finding time to roast each other at every opportunity. We know when it’s time to joke around and when it’s time to have serious conversations.
Our conflicts never turn sour, and we quickly move past our differences. The beauty of being both friends and co-founders is that if you have an argument with one, you can always vent to the other!
So, would I recommend starting a company with friends? If you have friends as good as mine, absolutely! Over the years, we’ve experienced countless wins and learned invaluable lessons. We’ve fought, laughed, and most importantly, found strength and comfort in each other. It's been an incredible journey, and I can't wait to see all that we'll accomplish together in the future.
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