Life in Balance: Amit Chaudhary’s Blog
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My thoughts on What to look for in a Startup co-founder. These apply to Technology startups and assumes the life cycle would be bootstrap(3-6months)->angel(1 year)->VC

• How to find a co-founder: Your first list should be everyone you have worked with or studied with.

• Role: For most firms, the ideal co-founder would be an Engineer or Product Manager, if selling to the corporate world, a Channels (Sales) persona is also a choice.

• Personality match: Will your co-founder both pushback and yield as needed. This can also be put in under maturity.

• Interview: Take an interview and make them take your interview. Do these on different days and on neutral grounds, a coffee shop or hike. People and priorities change, this is a good time to get some clarity.

• Minimum Qualities: They should be good in their field, be ready to make some risks and someone you are comfortable with. Ideally you both should be from the same field. It is hard, though not impossible to move a Software Engineer or Product Manager from Storage to Internet or vice versa.

• Test Run: Work with the person for a small project or spend sometime brain storming. Two months might save you years of grief.

• Full Time: Almost always, be ready to start full time on this as soon as it might be needed.

• Minimum investment: If not plunging in full time (not yet needing a place & time as Don Shapiro said) right away, agree to a minimum time commitment per week from each.

• Backup plan: Consider keeping a vesting period for founder share and what would happen if only one of you decides to run with it.

Also on the same topic, Questions to ask about your startup or idea from TechStars

Triggered by Andrew Chen, EIR at Mohr Davidow Ventures: How do you find a badass co-founder?