For partners, before anything is signed
You each answer the same questions on your own. Neither of you sees the other's answers until you're both done. Then you find out what you were quietly assuming about each other — while it's still easy to fix.
Free to start · No numbers until you've talked
The problem
Most partnerships are agreed in a good mood, over a conversation where everyone is being generous. Nobody wants to be the one who slows it down by asking what happens if it goes wrong.
So the difficult questions don't get asked, and both people walk away believing the other one agreed to something. Two years later, when the money or the hours or the exit finally forces the question, they find out they never did.
The disagreement was there from the first week. It just had nothing to bring it to the surface.
What you get back
Each one says what each of you said, why that tends to matter, and what to discuss. It never tells you who's right — that isn't ours to say, and a tool that picked a side would be useless to whichever partner it ruled against.
Ama
Expects to be the decision-maker on strategy and hiring.
Kwame
Expects to be the decision-maker on strategy and hiring.
Two people expecting the final say on the same decisions is the most common cause of partnership breakdown in the first two years. It is very fixable now and very hard to fix later.
Talk about
Which specific decisions each of you has the final say on. Not titles — decisions. Write them down.
One exception
Everything else can be read, discussed and passed. This one can't, because it isn't a disagreement between partners — it's a problem with the thing they're dividing.
Kwame
Contributing the platform code. Said some of it was written while employed at Northbank.
Employment contracts commonly assign anything made during employment to the employer, and in some cases that applies even to work done at home on your own equipment. If it applies here, the business may be giving away a share for something it does not own. That is not a question about Kwame.
Talk about
Find the contract and read the IP clause. If it is unclear, ask for a written release. We will keep flagging this until it is settled or the code is taken out of what is being contributed.
The moment people remember
Question 32 · Answered separately
If you divided this business up today, what would each person get?
What the product says next
This happens almost every time, and it isn't dishonesty. You remember your own work in detail — the late nights, the calls, the things that went wrong and you fixed. You remember your partner's work as a summary.
Psychologists have measured it since 1979. Married couples asked what share of the housework they do reliably total well over 100% between them.
One more thing: we deliberately didn't show either of you a running total while you were answering. If we had, you'd have adjusted toward 100 and none of this would have shown up.
How it works
For a lot of partnerships the free part is the whole value, and stopping there is a perfectly good outcome. The last two stages are still being built.
About 40 minutes each
Both of you answer the same 41 questions alone. Neither sees the other's answers until everyone has finished.
Immediate
Your answers side by side. Where you already agree, and where you don't — with no numbers attached yet.
When you're ready
Three methods for working out the split, shown side by side. Where they agree you can be confident; where they don't, you have more to talk about. This stage is still being built.
Ten minutes, and it changes things
51/49 is not what most people think it is. This stage shows what your percentages do to your voting power, which is a different question. It is still being built.
How it's built
These are design constraints, not marketing. Each one costs us something, which is roughly how you tell the difference.
Every finding states what each person said, why it tends to matter, and what to discuss. It never says who is right. A tool that picks a winner stops being usable by the person it rules against, which is half of everyone using it.
Not a pricing tactic. Show a partnership a percentage and they stop examining their assumptions and start negotiating against the figure. The assumptions have to come first or the number decides the conversation.
You answer alone and so do they. Nothing is shared until everyone has finished. If one person reads the other's answers first, what comes back isn't their view — it's a reaction to someone else's.
Every number traces to a stated formula and inputs you supplied. People accept an outcome they don't like when they can follow how it was reached. A system that emits a percentage and can't show its working destroys exactly that.
Questions
It's the most common worry and the reason the invitation is written the way it is. It leads with checking you're picturing the same thing, not with dividing anything up. There's also a version that puts the reason on you rather than them — some people find it easier to say 'I've been burned before, so I do this every time' than to explain why they're asking.
Send it to your partner. You both answer alone. Nobody sees anything until you're both done.