Couples therapy could squash your startup squabbles

A business partnership is kind of like a marriage. You complement one another, and make decisions together about how best to take care of your baby, aka your company. Both babies and companies require constant attention, loads of cash and a healthy relationship between co-parents/co-founders. This is why some tech founders have turned to couples therapy.

Dan Shipper and Nathan Baschez of media startup Every swear by the practice. It’s given them a space to unpack their relationship and prevent fights that could negatively impact their company.

• The two met around 2014 in the early-stage startup scene in New York and instantly became close friends. They had never come into serious conflict before, but the stress of startup decisions had them fighting all the time.
• Shipper had undergone couples therapy with a romantic partner previously. The conflicts felt somewhat similar, so they decided to forgo executive coaching and tried couples therapy instead.
• “If you feel like what you really need is the tactical business stuff, get a coach,” Shipper said. “But our experience is that 80-90% of the stuff is actually emotional and about interpersonal relationships and yourself.”

The framework behind traditional couples therapy can apply to co-founder couples therapy as well. Attachment theory, the Gottman Method, Imago Relationship Theory: all those concepts work for close, equal business partnerships, according to the experts who spoke with Protocol.

• The outcomes, however, are different. Romantic couples usually go to therapy with the goal of staying together. Business partners may separate eventually, and it might even be better for the company.
• Boundaries are important as well. It might not be necessary to discuss childhood traumas at length. But sessions will inevitably get personal.
• “You have to really trust the person,” Shipper said. “They can really hurt you if they take things that you say or reveal about yourself and use it out of context.”

Co-founder couples therapy is still a novelty, though its popularity is growing. “It’s something that is going to go from this woo-woo, touchy-feely domain to something I think should be standard operating practice for a successful, venture-backed company,” psychologist Matthew Jones said.

• The practice attracted a lot of media attention back in 2015 after the Genius founders told The New York Times about their therapy sessions. But many of the previous headlines about tech founders seeing therapists treat the practice as a bit of a spectacle.
• As therapy becomes less stigmatized, especially among younger people, couples therapy for business partners might become more commonplace. That’s been the trend for romantic couples therapy, at least.
• “Most of the co-founders that have come to me are already in a pretty bad place,” said Laura Kasper, a psychologist who sees both romantic couples and co-founders. “That was my experience as a couples’ therapist maybe 15 years ago, whereas now people who come to me for couples therapy are getting ahead of it.”

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