Couples Counseling for Tech Co-Founders? It’s Actually a Thing

Startups fail for a lot of reasons: bad product, wrong timing. But sometimes, it's just you.

Relationship problems between co-founders are one of the biggest reasons companies don't make it. Increasingly in Silicon Valley, business partners are looking for help before things go downhill -- they’re signing up for couples counseling.

“It felt like a marriage,” Jon Chintanaroad says of his business partnership with his friend, Mike Prestano. They launched a tech recruiting startup, Aspire Recruiting, in 2013.

“My joke was, during the day, Mike was my wife No. 1 and my girlfriend was my wife No. 2,” Chintanaroad says. “I would see her at night, and I see him all day.”

The two were friends for four years before they went into business together. Chintanaroad says their work styles really complemented one another.

“I’m very transactional-based, I’m kind of a Type-A personality, I just want to get it done,” Chintanaroad says. “Whereas Mike will listen to their whole life story and really cultivate that relationship. When we had both, we started to win over new clients and things went from there.”

The business took off right away, and the money came rolling in. But a year into it, they hit some rough patches. They missed some key customer acquisitions. Revenues dipped.

And that’s when their differences became less complementary and more problematic.

“It’s like any sports team. If you lose -- you should have scored this touchdown, you should have scored that basket. You should have passed to here instead of there,” Prestano says. “Those aren’t easy conversations.”

They started fighting a lot. Mike thought Jon spent too much money. Jon thought Mike wasn’t pulling his weight. Mike says they worried the business problems were starting to threaten their friendship.

“I think we both agree upon, no matter what happens with the business, if we keep doing it, or it stops, we still keep our friendship,” Prestano says.

They decided to try couples counseling -- though most therapists who work with co-founders call it “partnership coaching.”

It’s something more and more startup founders are doing. Jonathan Horowitz is a psychologist with offices in San Francisco and San Mateo. He says the requests he’s gotten for co-founder counseling have doubled in the last year. A lot of times, people call when things have already gotten really ugly.

“The company’s dead, something went horribly wrong in the relationship and they’re picking up the pieces afterwards,” he says.

Many startups, especially in the tech industry, are founded by young guys -- friends who met in college, got an apartment together and started working on their laptops around the clock to get a business off the ground. When things go well, co-founders can suddenly find themselves in complicated business situations with a lot of money -- and power -- on the line. They have to decide who’s going to be CEO. They have to answer to investors. These pressures test the relationship.

Most of the time, it’s usually lawyers getting called in to mediate heated disputes or to force one of the founders out of the company. Or to declare bankruptcy if the business failed.

“It’s good to do this work while it’s actually unfolding in the organizations, and set these things right before they go horribly wrong,” Horowitz says.

He says in a lot of business partnerships, there’s often one founder who is more dominant, even domineering, “and you have the other founder who might not feel like they’re being heard or respected. An imbalance like that can be insidious.”

In cases like that, good ideas get dismissed, opportunities are lost. Horowitz says his job is to help build trust, communication and empathy.

“All those things are important if you’re going to run a business with someone for years and years, just like a marriage,” he says.

It’s not just startups that have picked up on the idea. Couples counselors say larger companies like Cisco and Google have hired them to work with managers who aren’t getting along. Stanford Business School offers a group therapy course, where required reading includes "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work." The students call it the “touchy-feely” class.

For Jon Chintanaroad and Mike Prestano, a few sessions with a therapist made them both feel like they had permission to talk about their feelings.

“I think overall it resulted in both of us being more aware, as people, and balanced,” Chintanaroad says.

Chintanaroad worked on listening more. Prestano learned when to speak up if something was bothering him.

“Those things that were bottling up, I talked to Jon about it, expressed how I feel, and he took no offense, and actually he’s shown some compassion,” he says.

Their tech recruiting business is back on track -- and that leaves more energy for social recruiting. After a couple drinks on Friday, Chintanaroad asks Prestano to help him scout for a new girlfriend.

“He can be my wingman,” Chintanaroad says.

Prestano says the sales psychology they use at the office works just as well at the bar.

Curious about the boom/bust cycle that is reshaping the Bay Area? Check out our Boomtown series.