top of page

Founders Agreement Masterclass

Bullet-proof your startup team

In collaboration with 

splogo (1).webp

Build a Strong
Startup Foundation 
with our Founders Agreement Masterclass

Learn how to align with your co-founders on roles, equity, commitment, and vision. This masterclass covers essential discussions to build a solid foundation for your startup’s success.

Meet your instructors

images.jpeg
Melanie Gabriel

Ashley Jones

Melanie Gabriel is the co-founder and former CMO of Yokoy, a fintech company which provides AI-driven expense management solutions for medium-to-large enterprises globally. She co-founded Yokoy in 2019 with four other co-founders and rapidly grew it to 200+ employees, raising over $100M in Seed to Series B funding. After Yokoy, she co-founded Follow The Gradient, a platform for European founders and startup operators offering a weekly newsletter and podcast and other resources to address key startup challenges.

  • LinkedIn
Christof-Roduner-profile-2022.jpg
Christof Roduner

Don Francis

Christof is one of the co-founders of Scandit, an ETH spin-off scaleup using computer vision to make businesses more efficient in their data capture processes. Together with his two co-founders, Christof has been running Scandit for 14 and has successfully conducted several funding rounds with investors like Ariel Lüdi, Atomico, Google Ventures, NGP and Warburg Pincus. Nowadays they have 6 offices across the US, Europe and Asia. Christof’s role at Scandit has changed much throughout the years — currently, he’s the VP Engineering & CIO.

  • LinkedIn
VG.png
Viviana Gropengiesser

Alexa Young

Viviana Gropengiesser is the CEO of Talent Kick,  a Swiss-wide program by the Kick Foundation bringing the most outstanding global talents together by leveraging the best Swiss universities to form interdisciplinary diverse teams and combine hands-on entrepreneurial experience with their studies. She has over 10 years of operational experience in startups and NGO environments as CEO, board member or co-founder, and as an investor for a family office.​​​​​​

​

  • LinkedIn

Get Started With This Team Forming Masterclass

Explore these free masterclass modules to plan your Founders Agreement.

Intro & Why Teams Are So Important

Get to know your hosts and dive into the essentials of finding the right co-founders and building strong, successful teams for your startup ventures.

i

1

Personal Goals for
Founding a Company

What is important to you as a leader? When will you consider your company a success? VC or bootstrapped? Slow growth or growth at all costs? These are some of the questions Melanie and Christof want you to consider.

2

Roles and Responsibilities

In order to move fast and adapt to new challenges, it’s crucial to understand who owns what, how decisions are being made and who calls the shots for which topics.

3

Personal Situations

All co-founders must be clear on each other’s availability, whether that be time, money or headspace. This lesson outlines some of the discussions which are a must for high-achieving startup teams.

4

Equity, Vesting and Investment

Getting equity splits, co-founder exits, and the employee equity pool right from the start ensures everyone’s interests are protected and sets up a solid, equitable partnership for the co-founders.

5

Commitment

Will your co-founders work full-time or part-time? Do they have families to care for? Time-consuming hobbies? And what is their true motivation for wanting to build this company with you?

6

Final Remarks

As a final send-off, we’ll leave you with some last tips about what distinguishes the best teams from those who split up and give up over time.

“Even though we already knew each other, working through the Founders Agreement helped us align on a much deeper level. Those long evenings of discussion around the Founders Agreement made us realize the seriousness of what we were building and pushed us to ask questions we had never asked ourselves before. It helped us define our commitment and understand each other’s motivations, helping us to stay aligned when challenges arise. Without it, we might never have been able to formalize this dream of ours or become the well-oiled machine we are today. Thank you, Talent Kick!”

Hephaistos

Download The Founders Agreement

bottom of page