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9. Co-founders & Money: Patterns, Partnership, Trust - With Nicki Coe

"Nothing shines a light on your personal patterns, beliefs, and triggers like being a co-founder." 

That's how Nicki Coe - co-founder coach and co-founder of branding agency LUNA + LION - describes the experience of building a business with someone else. 

In this episode, Nicki shares her money story and what she's learned from navigating the co-founder dynamic firsthand. She's on a mission to change the statistic that 65% of startups fail due to co-founder fallout, and she brings both coaching expertise and lived experience to that work. 

We explore: 

  • Growing up in a home where money was always there — and what beliefs got absorbed alongside that comfort (money requires sacrifice, hard work, giving a lot of yourself) 
  • How her parents' divorce in her mid-twenties shifted her relationship with money towards fear and a sense that money couldn't fully be trusted 
  • Leaving a stable corporate job at the beginning of a pandemic to start a coaching practice, and then co-founding LUNA + LION 
  • The surprise of how motivating it was to make money for someone else — and the pressure that creates when things don't go well 
  • Navigating the 50/50 split: how they held that model through maternity leave and personal challenges, and why they eventually moved to a more fluid approach 
  • The friction that comes from caring too much — and how emotional charge can make important conversations feel impossible to have 
  • Going looking for a co-founder coach, not finding one, and realising she needed to become that support herself 
  • Why founders often carry a belief that they have something to prove — and how money becomes a black and white way to measure whether you've made it 
  • The question underneath the financial stress: "Am I good enough for this?" 
  • The conversations co-founders should be having about money — both practical (how much, how to split it, how to handle risk) and personal (why do you want the money, what does it mean to you) 
  • Making financial conversations fun and creative — going somewhere inspiring rather than having them by the coffee machine 
  • Why relational contracting matters as much as legal contracting in co-founder agreements 

We also discuss Nicki's new Co-Founder Agreement Package, which combines a coaching guide for relational conversations with a customisable legal template. 

Resources & Links 

Connect with Nicki Coe:  

Free Resource: 10 Essential Money Q's for Every Co-Founder Team — A clear set of questions to align on finances before they create friction, helping you uncover assumptions, build understanding, and clarify expectations at any stage of your business 

Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.

Connect with host Harriet Formby: LinkedIn | Instagram

🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.