The fastest way to lose a great collaborator: treat the first conversation like a negotiation instead of a conversation.
The moment someone reaches out about working together, and your first instinct is to protect equity, lock in terms, or control the split — you've already changed the tone. What could've been two people getting curious about a problem becomes two people quietly measuring each other.
Terms matter. They'll come. But they come after trust, not instead of it.
The best collaborations I've seen start with genuine curiosity about the problem — not with someone opening a Google Doc labeled "Founder Agreement" in the first call.
Talk like people first. Negotiate later.
