Have you ever seen a startup up close (as an employee, investor, advisor or friend -- not just in the news) where founders/execs were dating each other? 1 - saw this, seemed fine 2 - saw this, was bad for the company 3 - saw this, too early to tell / other / write below 4 - never seen this
The famous cases are Theranos, FTX, and WeWork, but that's kind of a biased sample...
My XP was a mix of 1 & 2. Seemed fine when it was good between them but was bad for the company when they had some relationship problems
3 - husband wife cofounders in FinTech. Eventually wife continued leading the company and husband spun off to create a new startup. They are still together as a couple.
lots of small businesses are started/run by married couples. not sure if they count as startups but many do quite well of course.
1) When I’ve seen this it hasn’t been a problem. Depends a lot on the individuals of course.
2 i think there’s difference between “dating” and “married” and dating, especially poly-dating and living on a job are definitely a red flag (even as i consider myself poly)
Slight twist -- it's worked when they're married (1) but not when they're dating (2).
