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In the early days of a startup, everyone is on the same page. But when a company reaches maturity, there’s no way to know how well a founding team will fit.

Put aside the romantic notion that startup teams are made up of visionaries building the future in real time. They are all human beings with their flaws.

Almost anything can destroy a co-founder relationship. I’ve seen partnerships suffer from financial disagreements, product pipelines and, in one case, a bad experience at Burning Man.

Starry-eyed newlyweds sign prenuptial agreements on a whim, and startup founders should do the same, advises Jonathon Aronoff, a partner at the litigation and employment law firm Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler.

“Unfortunately, as too many co-founders and couples realize, the best time to plan for negative outcomes is early in the relationship,” he wrote.

“Waiting for a conflict to arise can be difficult, and often leads to intractable disputes without a clear winner.”

Working with an attorney to create “strong and clear governing documents” early in your relationship will go a long way toward building trust in the founding team by creating comprehensive plans for how to handle events such as future fundraising or M&A transactions.

One key takeaway: A 50/50 partnership sounds good, but if two people can’t agree, “it can have disastrous consequences down the line,” says Aronoff. Coin flipping is “inconvenient”, so consider assigning a trusted third party as a node if necessary.

Few founders have experience working collaboratively over a long period of time. Considering that the average exit takes more than seven years, it’s important to set clear expectations early in the game.

Thank you very much for reading

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@your main actor

Table of Contents

Pitch Deck Teardown: Vory’s $10M Series A Pitch Deck

Image Credits: Spring (Opens in a new window)

B2B wholesaler Vory announced a $10 million Series A in August to help expand its inventory management services for independent grocery stores.

“How do you make an interface as fun to use as Candy Crush?” The company asked CEO Brandon Hill in the following video from the 13-slide deck shared with TC+:

Cover slide
Mission statement slide
Vori at a glance — (KPI slide, slightly modified)
“We help grocery” – middle slide
“Our Market: Independent Grocery Chain” – Market Slide
“Grocery stores still work on pencil and paper” – problem slide
“How do these stores work today” – problem slide
“Suddenly, Covid Has Changed Everything in the Grocery Store” – “Why Now” Slide
“Meet the All-in-One Grocery Back Office with Vori” – Solution Slide
“What retailers say” – market confirmation slide
“The Largest Digitized Retail Segment on Earth” – Market Size/TAM/SAM/SOM Slide
“Competing with Legacy Systems” – Competition Slide (Updated)
“This is why our team was born” – team slide

7 Investors Discuss How AgTech Can Solve Agriculture’s Biggest Challenge

Crop selection in field aerial view; Agtech

Image Credits: Creative drone (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Of all global industries, perhaps none is more vulnerable to climate change than agriculture.

There is consensus among prominent scientists that the amount of CO₂ What we are putting into the atmosphere is exacerbating extreme weather events. How does that affect the way agtech VCs operate during the downturn?

To find out more, we conducted a survey:

Brett Brohl, Managing Director, Techstars Farm to Fork, and Managing Partner, Bread & Butter Ventures
Monica Varman, Partner, G2 Venture Partners
Jinesh Shah, Managing Partner, Omnivore
Adam Anders, Managing Partner, Anterra Capital
Ting-Ting Liu, Investor and Ashutosh Sharma India Head, Process Ventures
Camilla Petguinat, Partner, Best Labs

Dear Sophie: Any tips for negotiating visa and green card sponsorship?

A lonely figure at the entrance to the fence of the maze with an American flag in the middle

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

Dear Sophie,

I am currently on an F-1 student visa. I received my bachelor’s degree in computer science in December and am applying for OPT. I want to stay and work in America

Do you have any tips for negotiating visa and green card sponsorship? Anything else I should keep in mind when I start talking to prospective employers?

– Shy student

The dynamic cloud landscape: from observation to optimization

When a girl paints the wall from the clouds to the clear blue sky; Cloud optimization

Image Credits: Prayer of Charles / I.E.M (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images

In an in-depth market map, early stage investor Chelsea Goddard shares her research on the future of cloud computing, which considers how the “increased demand for scalability” is changing the industry.

“Once we get past this cloud and edge initiative, infrastructure investment will move to the next set of strategic enterprise priorities, automation and optimization,” Goddard predicts.