Whenever co-founders bust up, there is inevitable trauma to the business of the startup no matter what mechanism is in place to assure that one particular found

Whenever co-founders bust up, there is inevitable trauma to the business of the startup no matter what mechanism is in place to assure that one particular founder (or a faction) has the final say. In this sense (as recognized in this post), it is the people who matter more than any particular mechanism. Having represented countless founders over many years, I have seen all sorts of startups succeed even though they lacked a mechanism for ultimately determining control and relied instead on shared governance. This is by far the norm and not the exception and simply signifies that most people manage to get along and tend to resolve their issues most of the time when it matters even though they theoretically could get ensnared in deadlocks. I have also seen the classic bust-ups and fights over control, and these truly are a mess - hence the advice in this post to put a control mechanism in place if possible can prove helpful, at least if co-founders are willing to cede final authority to one among their group. The bottom line in this respect, though, is that most founding groups are not willing to cede such authority in this manner - I think this has less to do with founders failing to think the issues through than it has to do with basic human psychology. It simply is not easy for those starting a venture on comparatively equal footing to elevate the status of one above the others. In turn, in cases where it is obvious that there is one dominant founder, this normally is reflected in that founder's getting a disproportionate share of the equity and unilaterally controlling the company in that manner. That said, this is a thoughtful post that will help founders to think through and deal with this issue. By the way, a common method used by a still small minority of founders to give control to some over others is the Class A/Class B common stock approach (popularized by Google) by which all common shareholders have identical rights except that the B holders get a 10x voting advantage for their shares (or any similar variation on this theme).