Building a company with your partner, one founder at a time

Pricing decisions can make or break a startup. For Sarah Hum and her co-founder Andrew Rasmussen, those decisions don’t always stop at 5pm. Hum met Rasmussen in 2013 at Facebook (now Meta), where she was a product design intern and he was a software engineer. The two “hit it off,” says Hum, and also quickly learned that they were good partners in product building. In 2017, they launched Canny, a feedback management platform for product managers.

At Canny, there’s no pricing expert in the room. Decisions come down to trade-offs, discussion, and, at times, disagreement. Hum has a philosophy for moments like these: disagree and commit.

“Even if we disagree, I can say, ‘I don’t fully agree with this because of this reason, but I’m willing to try it.’ And that’s the committing part,” she says.

Hum’s mornings start with a walk around her Seattle neighborhood with their dog, Emmy. By the time she returns home, Rasmussen is already on calls in his office on the third floor.

Working with a romantic partner is becoming more common, with about 10% of US businesses owned and run by spouses. But blending a relationship with a startup raises a different kind of challenge—where high-stakes decisions, like pricing or hiring, don’t end when the workday does.

Today, Hum leads product and design, while Rasmussen handles finance, and legal. He’s also the engineer of the company. That split helps reduce friction—but not every decision fits neatly into either's lane. Initially, they couldn’t agree on whether to raise money.

“Andrew was a big fan of Hacker News and Y Combinator…but I didn’t like the idea of having investors breathe down your neck,” she says. “Basically determining what your company will be.”

Canny ultimately stayed bootstrapped.

The toughest decisions, Hum says, aren’t about product or strategy, but about people. Last year, the team peaked at 18 employees. Today, it’s 10. Those calls—whether to hire, hold back, or let someone go—cut across both of their roles. Rasmussen keeps a close eye on what the company can afford.

“He’s really up to speed on how much we’re willing to spend,” Hum says.

For her, those decisions tie back to a broader philosophy.

“There’s something to be said about hiring with the money you make versus the money an investor gives you,” she says. “If you’re not able to sustainably grow your team with it, do you really have a business?”

When your co-founder is also your partner, boundaries aren’t fixed; they’re negotiated in real time.

“If I’m really, really stressed, I like it not to leak into my life later.” Hum says. “If something’s really urgent…we’re going to talk about it. But if not, we need to protect our sanity.”

That can mean setting limits.

“We talk about work for 10 minutes and then we’re done, like literally, set a timer,” she says.

Even then, it’s not always clean.

“At the end of the day, I’ve had so many conversations. I just don’t want to talk about work,” she says.

Physical separation helps too. The two often spend the workday apart, reconnecting in the evening over dinner and, lately, an episode of Survivor.

Still, working together comes with advantages. Because they’re building the company side by side, there’s less need to explain the pressures that come with it. That shared understanding, Hum says, is what makes it work.

“Startups are very unpredictable,” she says. “To have somebody there to support you and be in it with you is huge. I cannot imagine doing this on my own.”