TheoryMarch 8, 202639 min read

Founder Exit Threshold Model: Why Cofounders Rarely Leave Gradually

A state-transition view of founder departure using trust debt, runway stress, outside options, and repair credibility

Founder departures are often narrated as emotional drift, but they behave more like threshold events. This paper models cofounder exit as a nonlinear transition: multiple stress variables accumulate over time, and once a founder's exit pressure crosses a personal threshold for long enough, the organization moves from unstable cooperation into departure dynamics.

founder-exitthreshold-modelgame-theorycofoundersstartup-governanceorganizational-designtrust-debtrepeated-gamesfounder-dynamicsfounder-theory-series
TheoryMarch 8, 202642 min read

Repeated Games and the Cofounder Problem: Why Startup Cooperation Depends on Shared Time Horizons

Discount factors, reciprocity, and overlapping household constraints explain why capable founders still fail to sustain cooperation

A startup is not a one-shot negotiation. It is a repeated game played through hiring, product crises, financing pressure, and daily trust updates. This paper applies repeated-game theory to cofounder relationships and shows why long-term cooperation depends less on abstract loyalty than on shared time horizons, sufficiently high discount factors, and freedom from external games that dominate short-term decisions.

repeated-gamesgame-theorycofoundersstartup-governancediscount-factorcooperationorganizational-designfounder-dynamicsfounder-theory-seriesMARIA-OS