This is insightful and reasonable. That said - it might be worth it for young-ish people to also not think of a startup as something 'precious' and that you do

This is insightful and reasonable. That said - it might be worth it for young-ish people to also not think of a startup as something 'precious' and that you don't need to get along super deeply with the others. It's not your baby, it's just a project. Comedy and script writers talk about this - they encourage getting past the point of working out every little detail towards just 'writing'. Work on stuff that works and that other participants (aka investors) want to work on and where there is momentum. Certain minimums - yes. Probably shared vision. At the same time, no plan lasts contact with the enemy/market so the saying goes and it's almost as though the team needs to be able to ride storms. If we think of ourselves as professionals first and not makers/artists first ... there might be more room to get along. Focus on the market, customers, product, outcomes, get along and that's it. Edit: Assuming have a room full of actually talented, creative conscientious people who have the EI/maturity to 'get along well' - shouldn't partnering up be one of the easier things to do? From a certain perspective it's kind of ridiculous that it's so hard for people to 'match' (assuming again high levels of talent, conscientiousness, EI, professionalism). The primary issue I'm going to guess is willingness to work on a specific project wherein someone already has some vision - but one could argue this is a sign of missing professionalism on the part of all parties. Not only can visions be adjusted, but founders might want to recognize that if their vision isn't going to get traction that it might be worth dropping the concept entirely and focusing instead on the other participant. And irrespective of the other parties willingness to buy into a specific vision, they're definitely going to have a lot of their own inputs given their backgrounds and it's probably worth being malleable at very least. Marc Andreesen is famous for saying 'it's not about passion it's about what you're good at' and that's fundamentally a measure of mature professional disposition. Of course you can't work on something you really don't want to ... but otherwise the ambition should invariably be derived from the opportunity, people, markets - so many factors many of which aren't related to 'the thing'. If it's a bunch of musicians at the 'Rock School Academy' I can see it being hard to form groups, but I wonder if a group of professionals should be able to link up in a better way, especially with some guidance and 3rd party / objective mentors helping to create critical masses.