How cofounders share one executive assistant: why a 75/25 split beats 50/50, how daily clashes get settled, and what to agree before onboarding.
Yes. Two or three founders can share one executive assistant, and in smaller companies it is one of the most common setups DonnaPro sees. It works best when one founder is the clear primary user, with a split closer to 75/25 than 50/50, and when the founders agree before onboarding whose request wins when two land at once. On DonnaPro’s part time package, the founders together save 15 hours a week, or 60+ hours a month. This increases if you choose to upgrade to the full time package.
Some founders who speak to DonnaPro are not just looking for an assistant for themselves. They are also looking for one for other decision makers in the leadership team. A UK engineering cofounder put it better than any marketing copy: the company needs one assistant “rather than either of us individually”.
That instinct is sound. In a company of five or fifteen people, the founders share the same investors, the same suppliers and often the same calendar problems. Splitting the work between two part time hires would double the onboarding and halve the context. One assistant who sees the whole picture is usually worth more than two who each see half of it.
The cost of not delegating is well documented. A Gallup study of 143 Inc. 500 CEOs (opens in a new tab) found that leaders with high delegation talent generated about 33% more revenue than those with limited delegation talent. For a founding team, sharing an assistant is often the first realistic step towards that, because no single founder can yet justify a full assistant alone. If you are not sure you have reached that point, start with when to hire an executive assistant.
The practical side is also simpler than it used to be. As Google Calendar’s help pages (opens in a new tab) show, each founder can give the assistant permission to make changes to their own calendar separately, so one person can manage two or three diaries without anyone sharing a login.
Yes, two founders can share one executive assistant, and it often works better than giving each founder a little help of their own.
A shared assistant becomes the one person who knows what both founders have promised, to whom and by when. That is the main benefit, and it is easy to underrate. When a supplier emails one founder and a client calls the other about the same project, a shared assistant connects the two before either founder has to.
The arrangement does need structure. Without it, the assistant ends up deciding between two bosses, which is neither fair to them nor good for the company. The rest of this guide covers that structure: who has priority, how daily clashes get resolved, what to agree before you start, and when one assistant stops being enough.
The setups that run most smoothly have one founder as the main user and the other as a secondary one, rather than a strict 50/50 share.
One prospect described his planned arrangement as 75/25, with himself as the main user. Filip told him that was easier to run than an even split, because most priority conflicts resolve themselves. The assistant knows whose work comes first by default, and the second founder knows their requests fit around it.
An even split sounds fairer, but it leaves the assistant with no default. Every clash becomes a judgement call between two people they report to. That is exactly the position a good assistant should never be in.
In practice, the primary user is usually the founder with the heaviest external load: the most investor contact, the most travel, the busiest inbox. That is often, though not always, the CEO.
At DonnaPro, a shared arrangement is normally billed as one package for the company, which keeps invoicing simple. One founder is the main point of contact, and the founders divide the assistant’s time between them however suits their needs. On a part time package, the assistant fits both founders’ work into the part time hours, so the founders together save 15 hours a week, or 60+ hours a month. On a full time package, the assistant works for the company full time. What each package includes is set out in our executive assistant cost guide.
Your assistant should flag a clash between founders, not settle it, and a simple rule agreed in advance means most clashes never need a conversation at all.
Most of an assistant’s work does not compete. Booking travel for one founder does not stop the assistant from preparing a board pack for the other. The clashes that do happen are usually about time: two urgent requests on the same afternoon, or two meetings that both founders want in the same slot.
Four habits keep that manageable:
Having one founder as the main point of contact helps here too. When a clash cannot wait for both founders, the assistant knows whose call it is.
For more on protecting founder time once delegation is in place, see our guide to CEO time management.
When one founder steps away for parental leave, a shared assistant who already knows both founders’ work is one of the most effective ways to keep nothing from slipping.
One founder who spoke to DonnaPro was about to start six months of maternity leave, with her cofounder stepping up to run the company as CEO. They were hiring an assistant partly to carry continuity across that handover. It is a use case few people plan for, even though leave can be long: in the UK, for example, statutory maternity leave runs for up to 52 weeks (opens in a new tab).
The principle is simple. An assistant who already works for both founders holds the threads that would otherwise be dropped: which investor is expecting an update, which supplier is waiting on a decision, which commitments the departing founder made. When the leave starts, the primary user changes. When it ends, the assistant briefs the returning founder on what moved while they were away.
If you are planning around a leave, these steps help:
Couples who run a business together, and other family businesses, can share one assistant well, as long as they agree where business ends and household begins.
This came up more than once on DonnaPro’s calls. The appeal is obvious: the same person handles the company diary and the family logistics that collide with it, such as school holidays, travel and medical appointments.
The risk is blur. When both principals are also family, requests arrive at breakfast, in passing and by voice note, and the assistant can end up holding information one spouse assumed the other already knew. Two agreements prevent most of that:
Personal admin is a normal part of an executive assistant’s work, so this is not a stretch of the role. It simply needs the same clarity as any other shared arrangement.
One person holding both diaries is the whole point of the arrangement, and the reason it needs a rule.
You need a second assistant, or more hours, when the secondary founder’s requests start waiting as a matter of routine rather than now and then.
A shared arrangement does not fail suddenly. It strains first, and the signs are easy to read if you look for them:
When that happens, the usual first step is more hours, moving the shared arrangement from part time to full time. Two separate assistants make sense when both founders need full time support of their own. Even then, DonnaPro recommends starting on a shared part time arrangement and upgrading if necessary, because it is much easier to see what each founder really needs once the work is running. With DonnaPro, the team raises the conversation when the hours consistently run over, rather than quietly billing more, and does not backdate charges. How an agency handles that conversation is worth checking before you choose one.
Agree five things between you before your assistant starts, so they never have to referee a disagreement the founders have not had yet.
Write these on one page and share it with your assistant on the first day. It takes half an hour and saves weeks of awkwardness. If you are still deciding whether to hire at all, see the questions founders ask before hiring an executive assistant.
Book Your Free Strategy SessionThis guide draws on DonnaPro’s sales conversations with founding teams who wanted to share one assistant, guidance from Filip Pesek given on those calls, published research on delegation, and official guidance on calendar sharing and parental leave. Practices and leave rules change, so check current details for your own country before planning around them.
Sources reviewed
Checked for accuracy against how DonnaPro actually works before publication.
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