Historically, about 40% of our founding teams members did not go through with OSS, split evenly between OSS not considering going forward, and founders not wishing to continue.
Until the company is formally created, we consider to have a mutual right to say we will not proceed forward. This marks more or less then 12th week of our collaboration. However, historically all but one founders that passed the 2nd week mark passed the 12th.
Reasons for not going forward in the past included :
- Mutual work-styles incompatibility with OSS ;
- Cultural mismatch ;
- Founder not seeing themselves working together in the future ;
- OSS not being the right fit for the founder ;
- Founder lifestyle not compatible with projected mental & work load.
To cope with this very real risk, the process we follow at OSS is simple :
- Full transparency mindset : All OSS members are and will be fully transparent on how the relationship and work ethic is going. The week close process (see below) ensures everything that is not going well is at least laid out bare for everyone to see. You can expect from OSS, and OSS will expect from you, full transparency ;
- Week close process : each end of the week, every single member of the operational team (founders + OSS) conducts a week review, including things not working re:personal positioning of founders and OSS
- 2 weeks / 10 weeks "safe periods" : To not work under constant threat of everything stopping at any moment, we agree to preserve "safe periods" during which we work together no matter what, typically of 2 weeks at start and then in 10 weeks increments.
In the event of the "not going forward" case, OSS A. typically opens up the founder pipe to remaining founders for team to be complete again and B. helps the out founder to find her next step, with great success so far.