161–170 of 172 posts
But what is a co-founder exactly? I can't imagine a startup being started, built and brought to an exit by a single person -- every employee contributes to some extent, and in my view an early employee who contributed a great deal should in all fairness be considered a (minority) founder.
Being an early employee doesn't make you a founder, no matter your effort.
I've cofounded 4 different startups. All were good ideas that bled cash or time and flopped, largely due to infighting or founder differences. One cofounder of one of the companies got really nasty about trying to leave with the rights to the company and we other two cofounders just let him have it. He sold the rights and it's now a successful venture-backed startup with soaring profits (two cofounders). Good for tha…
Are older single founders more likely to succeed?
It's like the success rates of 2nd marriages are worse than 1st marriages. You would think that people would get smarter with their 2nd, but it's not the case.
I think this would massively distort your results. Founders with a history of success are vastly more likely to succeed in a new venture for numerous reasons, but most people who are interested in these stats (both founders and investors) are interested in the pre-big-win founder case.
Also, I suspect far more 'startups' have a single founder, purely because it's so incredibly easy to 'start' something alone. Having a cofounder implies a certain level of organization and commitment - it doesn't really work with that pet project you dabble with occasionally. If solo dabblers far outnumber 'team' dabblers then you'd expect them to be over represented in successes even if their success rate was much lower.
The whole reason starting a startup is so stressful, and why you need co-founders, is because of the need for rocket growth to satisfy investors. Take out investors and you take out the need for ridiculous growth and the stress and the need for co-founders.
True, but that's not really building a "startup" anymore. That's just starting a business.
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Oh, I agree that a startup needs an executable vision. However if someone provides just the vision but doesn't put as much work in as everybody else that's an advisory role, not a co-founder role, and should be reflected in the equity distribution. The thing is that vision is just so much easier than actually doing the grinding grunt work. "Vision without execution is hallucination" - Thomas Edison
Disagree. I've literally run a startup where I took an opportunity I saw, pitched it to a cofounder, got a single client, cofounder did all the work. After year, cofounder was tried of doing work, so I told them how to turn the service into a product and rapidly got five clients; after that, the cofounder didn't have to do anymore work either. I'm not lazy, happy to do hard work, but if I see an exploitable situation…
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> The problem I find (and one I've seen in a lot of cofounder groups) is that most of the people who want to start startups are visionaries. It's simpler than that. Most people just prefer slacking off to working their butts off. However it's the narcissists and sociopaths that will call their slacking off being "visionary" while the good guys either just leave or start working their butts off as everybody else. Obvi…
Working your butt off has zero to do with having a executable vision that creates value. Clearly shit needs to get done, but there's only so many hours in the a life of a startup and being able to see what needs to be done ultimately is more important than just getting stuff done. __ "I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." - Bill Gates
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Why would you exploit your cofounder into performing a disproportionate amount of work?
I didn't exploit the cofounder, I presented them with an opportunity, they were fully aware of the situation. In fact, they were excited about the project, enjoyed the work, and often bragged about it to our friends. Beyond that, after I told him how to turn the service into a product, I turn something that without me would have had no value after they stopped into something that produced value for years without any…
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> Most people just prefer slacking off to working their butts off. Representing the individual desire to work for "most people" isn't your job or your right any more than it's my right to say your internal view of the world is totally fucked up if you think that way. It's all well and fine to mention there are sociopaths in the industry, but colluding them with narcissists is unreasonable. Narcissism is simply the ab…
I think it's safe to say most people would rather slack off than work extremely hard. Sometimes, rarely, people have a strong sense of purpose, or a very high level of professionalism. But 95% of people, if they could chose to take a big salary - AND - chill and not do much, probably would.
Taking a "big salary" is just a symptom of not being careful with how we implement consciousness on the Internet. Taking a moment to appreciate what one has in this moment is far more important than what one may have tomorrow.
I've cofounded 4 different startups. All were good ideas that bled cash or time and flopped, largely due to infighting or founder differences. One cofounder of one of the companies got really nasty about trying to leave with the rights to the company and we other two cofounders just let him have it. He sold the rights and it's now a successful venture-backed startup with soaring profits (two cofounders). Good for tha…
> Since then, I've managed my own single-founder startup. We're profitable, growing, and valued at about $2.2 million. We're implementing a lot more over the course of this year and next, and I will look to exit in early 2018, once our valuation is closer to the $10 million or $20 million range. Did you raise any capital on that one? Or was it bootstrapped + growing?
I'd be open to taking capital on a future project, simply because I'm experienced enough now to know what our upside is and what percentage and how much control I'd be comfortable parting with, and for how much. On this present project, I haven't even bothered to explore it, because we have our trajectory over the next 1.5 years mapped out and everything we want to do we can pay for with profits already, so there's not a lot of incentive to take months off from driving the business forward to go shopping around for investors instead.