Your co-founder relationship is the single most important variable in your startup's success, and one of the most likely things to destroy it.

Today, Yaniv Bernstein sits down with Dr. Matthew Jones, author of ‘The Cofounder Effect’ and founder of Co-Founder Clarity, to dig into the psychology of co-founder relationships: why they break down and what the warning signs look like.

Matt brings a rare combination of clinical depth and startup-world pragmatism to the topic - an essential skillset to help you properly understand common co-founder pitfalls, and how to avoid them.

In this episode, you will:

• Learn what 'negative sentiment override' is, why it's the tipping point in a deteriorating co-founder relationship, and how to catch it before it takes hold.

• Discover how the co-founder relationship is structurally different from a marriage, and why that means you have to deliberately repair and reconnect with your co-founder.

• Hear why power dynamics in founding teams are almost always present and are often more destructive when left unnamed.

• Find out why being able to navigate conflict is more important than finding the 'right' co-founder pairing.

• Understand the risks of identity fusion with your startup, and why professional distance is a feature rather than a weakness.

• Learn why co-founder agreements need to evolve over time, and what a healthy renegotiation looks like.

• Explore the unique dynamics of three- and four-person founding teams, including the coalition patterns that tend to emerge and why they're so destructive.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Dr. Matthew Jones’ website, Co-Founder Clarity (his coaching practice): https://www.cofounderclarity.com

• ‘The Founder's Dilemmas’ by Noam Wasserman: https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Princeton-Entrepreneurship/dp/0691158304

• 'Knowing This Data Will Make You A Better Fundraiser', the TSP episode with Carta's Head of Insights, Peter Walker: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7aI9NeIVZ7JqkSH2OsizBF

• The Gottman Institute - the research behind 'negative sentiment override' discussed in this episode: https://www.gottman.com

• Dr. Matthew Jones on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-matthew-jones-7a832a37/

The Pact

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Key links

This episode of the Startup Podcast is sponsored by .tech domains. Forget weird prefixes and creative misspellings; the availability for .tech domains is simply way better than .com. For a clean name that highlights your tech credentials, get a .tech domain at your favorite registrar.

This episode of the Startup Podcast is sponsored by Vanta. Vanta helps businesses get and stay compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in demand compliance frameworks. With over 200 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on. For a limited time offer of US$1,000 off, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://⁠www.vanta.com/tsp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Get your question in for our next Q&A episode: https://forms.gle/NZzgNWVLiFmwvFA2A

The Startup Podcast website: https://www.tsp.show/episodes/

Learn more about Chris and Yaniv

Work 1:1 with Chris: http://chrissaad.com/advisory/

Follow Chris on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissaad/

Follow Yaniv on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ybernstein/

Producer: Justin McArthur https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-mcarthur

Intro Voice: Jeremiah Owyang https://web-strategist.com/

In a deeply regulated industry such as healthcare, building an AI-native app poses a host of unique challenges, particularly when it comes to navigating customer privacy and industry red tape. How do you create an industry-leading resource and stay on the cutting edge of tech, while managing these constraints?

Keoki Alexander-Chang can help you there. He's the founder and CEO of Minikai, a Melbourne-based startup using AI agents to slash the administrative burden on disability and aged care providers. Before launching Minikai, he led Deloitte's Forensic AI lab, so he's been thinking about applied AI in complex, regulated environments for far longer than most founders.

In this episode, Yaniv sits down with Keoki to explore what it really means to build a person-centred AI product in a high-stakes regulated sector — and how Minikai applies that same AI-native mindset to their internal operations, through fine-grained access control, human-in-the-loop design, and AI agents keeping the entire sales pipeline up to date in the background.

In this episode, you will:

• Learn how to design agentic AI products for high-stakes regulated environments
• Understand the importance of intentionally including fine-grained access control, provenance and adding friction to the process in order to keep humans in the loop
• Make sense of the fundamental shift within the build vs. buy equation, and why Minikai is questioning every SaaS tool in their stack
• Find out why Keoki treats his product like a garden, and why pruning is just as important as growing
• Understand what "person-centred AI" actually means in the disability and aged care context
• Hear how Minikai's team now uses continuously running AI agents to keep their entire HubSpot pipeline up to date
• Learn about the story of the lapel mics: how Minikai is condensing the entire workflow from meeting to working code, skipping Jira entirely

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Minikai (Keoki's startup: AI agents for disability and aged care providers): https://www.minikai.com/
• Keoki Alexander-Chang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keokichang/
• DJI Mic (the lapel mic Keoki's team uses to capture all meeting audio for Claude): https://www.dji.com/mic
• Insiders React: How OpenClaw and Claude Cowork changed Gary Lo's approach to startups (the companion TSP episode referenced by Yaniv): https://www.tsp.show/insiders-react-how-openclaw-and-claude-cowork-changed-gary-los-approach-to-startups-w-gary-lo-op/

The Pact

Honor the Startup Podcast Pact! If you have listened to TSP and gotten value from it, please:

Follow, rate, and review us in your listening app

Subscribe to the TSP Mailing List to gain access to exclusive newsletter-only content and early access to information on upcoming episodes: https://thestartuppodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Secure your official TSP merchandise at https://shop.tsp.show/

Follow us here on YouTube for full-video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNjm1MTdjysRRV07fSf0yGg

Give us a public shout-out on LinkedIn or anywhere you have a social media following

Key links

This episode of the Startup Podcast is sponsored by .tech domains. Forget weird prefixes and creative misspellings; the availability for .tech domains is simply way better than .com. For a clean name that highlights your tech credentials, get a .tech domain at your favorite registrar.

Get your question in for our next Q&A episode: https://forms.gle/NZzgNWVLiFmwvFA2A

The Startup Podcast website: https://www.tsp.show/episodes/

Learn more about Chris and Yaniv

Work 1:1 with Chris: http://chrissaad.com/advisory/

Follow Chris on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissaad/

Follow Yaniv on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ybernstein/

Producer: Justin McArthur https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-mcarthur

Intro Voice: Jeremiah Owyang https://web-strategist.com/