What would be the value of this article?
You are who you are. Some are innate qualities and some are simply the cards that you have been dealt with.
You have to become what you want to be with what you got and then some one will write an article some day mentioning you as a reference and the qualities you have as the key to being a founder :)
What We Look for in Founders
151–160 of 188 posts
Re: What We Look for in Founders
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Were Woz and Jobs "friends"? I believe the answer to that is "absolutely". They certainly weren't in it for the money at first. Woz had to be very explicitly convinced to leave his nice job at H-P even after they had built the first Apple PC. If you insist that their friendship was somehow bogus because real friendships do not involve "shared purpose", I'm not sure I have any friends, by your weird definition. My hig…
I'm pushing back on how friendships likely develop during a startup effort and how that's different from existing friendships that lead to a startup. Jobs and Woz, based on FaW, seem to fall more into the former category. Brin and Page too. By contrast, Gates and Allen, as childhood friends, seem to better fit pg's model. I'm not sure where you got that last bit from what I said. I'm working with some great folks now…
pg isn't saying that your team is flawed - he's talking in general, and in a statistical sense. People who start out as friends before are more likely to succeed - that doesn't imply anything bad about your specific group. I think at the level where you're "interviewing" thousands of teams, looking for patterns starts to mean a lot.
Re: What We Look for in Founders
#1532 questions on the "friendship" issue: 1. How do you judge whether co-founders are good friends? I'm guessing a simple "how long have they been working together" test is a good indication, but anything else? 2. What level of feedback do you usually give teams that didn't make it? Especially teams that got to the interview stage but didn't make it through? I'm wondering if you've ever told a team your suspicions that…
There are a lot of ways. Many of the questions on the YC application are at least partially about this. When and how did the founders meet? What have they worked on together? Even the stock split sometimes tells us a lot. Yes, we've told groups that we weren't funding them because their friendship didn't seem strong enough to withstand a startup. You'd be surprised some of the meltdowns we've seen in interviews.
This is very interesting, and maybe goes against normal reasoning. I've heard the general idea is not to become business partners with friends, but the opposite seems to be true with startups.
In the two startups I've been involved in previously, I hung in there because I didn't want to let the other person down. One ended up dissolving, but we remain on good terms. The other is ongoing, where I freelance, but give it my all because I don't want to let the other person down.
The third is new, and I just was approached by an old friend who wants to get involved. I thought about it for a second, then realized he's the kind of person I don't want to let down and I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual.
Re: What We Look for in Founders
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accountants don't get involved until the company makes enough money to need an accountant. Actually, here in Croatia every form of company is obliged by law to have a licensed accountant (working for them or contract). You can't do your own paperwork - and TBH I wouldn't want to, it is too much liability if something goes wrong when filing papers.
it is too much liability if something goes wrong when filing papers. Interesting. In the countries I know of, the company directors are responsible (and liable) for the accounts being correct, not the accountants.
Both are liable here. Director is basically liable for everything wrong, and accountant is liable for mis-representing books (director also takes the blame, but accountant shouldn't do that in the first place) as well as accounting errors.
Re: What We Look for in Founders
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was about to post how this list makes me question leaving BigCo. I must be in the 20%, I don't think I have any of these qualities, and behold, my bank account tells me that none of my ventures have succeeded.
If you've worked on several ventures, I would guess you're more determined than most of the population. Most people only talk or dream of actually working on projects, and never actually do anything with it.
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Re: What We Look for in Founders
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accountants don't get involved until the company makes enough money to need an accountant. Actually, here in Croatia every form of company is obliged by law to have a licensed accountant (working for them or contract). You can't do your own paperwork - and TBH I wouldn't want to, it is too much liability if something goes wrong when filing papers.
And that fact would constitute a major drag on ever developing a startup culture. See http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html for some of the other ones.
I've read that, all valid points. However, I should mention that accounting on a startup level (bills, invoices, salaries, tax) is really not a drag here. In fact I would argue it's faster to just collect your inputs and outputs (invoices and bills) and get them to your accountant once per month or quarterly, of half year, or yearly (depends how you told tax office how you will do it). Accountant does the rest for you. On the other hand, you could do it all by yourself and have an accountant check your papers and sign them (some people do it like that). Also, no capital gains tax here. :) But this country could do take some pro-active measures for startups. I don't even want to go there, because I would have to write a book on their mistakes.
Re: What We Look for in Founders
#157pg: would you show an example of an impressive answer to the question about hacking a system to one's advantage?
I'm not pg, but this is probably the best place to tell one of my favorite stories.
The highway navigational signs in LA are notoriously confusing, especially this one sign in particular which didn't make sufficiently obvious an exit onto I-5. So some local took note of the sign and started to work. He found out exactly what paint colors to use, cut some sheet metal the right way, and made a North I-5 shield. Then he made himself a counterfeit Caltrans (California highway department) uniform, went to the sign, and altered it with the counterfeit shield to point out the exit. (He even made the shield dirty, to make it seem like it had been there for some time rather than being newly installed.)
It was nine months before the highway department even noticed--and when they did, they didn't even change it back. It stayed up for years until the sign was completely replaced--complete with this guy's alteration.
I don't know if that qualifies as hacking a system to one's advantage, or even as a hack, but I think it gets at the underlying personality trait.
Links:
http://www.good.is/post/the-fake-freeway-sign-that-became-a-...
Re: What We Look for in Founders
#158Like all "lists," I would take and file away as a "best practice;" particularly one that comes from Paul Graham. Just don't let the list limit you from executing the plan for your dream. YC even has a place for this on their application...it's called "hacking the system!" The lesser of these have achieved greatness. Many said I would never finish college and law school while being married, but two bar exams later...
Re: What We Look for in Founders
#159I struggled to think about how I would answer the "Naughty" question. I thought about it for awhile and remembered something that happened almost 15 years ago.
I hated high school with a passion that still surprises me when I look back on it. My high school allowed kids who got accepted to college to go and have school pay for it while getting credit for college and high school. This sounded great to me but getting accepted was going to be a challenge because I wasn't a great student and I was only 15 at the time.
I met with the admissions officer at the college I wanted to attend and she wasn't sure at all about me. I had reviewed the course catalog before the meeting and made her a suggestion. I said "If I take a 400 level course and get an "A" would that prove to you that I'm up to doing college level work?" She said yes and I suggested that I take a course on the history of World War 2. World War 2 was a mild obsession of mine from 13-14 and I still to this day remember reading pages and pages of statistics about shipping losses during various times during the war. I knew every imaginable detail about virtually anything that had to do with World War 2. She didn't know this of course and warned me many times about what I was getting myself into in signing up for this course.
I was accepted with the provision that we would review my grades after the semester was over. I received the highest grade in the class and the entire course catalog was open to me until I graduated from high school. This ended up working in my favor in many ways but the most obvious benefit was that I graduated high school with virtually all of my liberal arts electives done without having to pay anything for it.
Not sure if this is the spirit of the question or not but it seems like it to me.
Re: What We Look for in Founders
#160It is pretty hard to change who you are at the core. But the thing about it is that you have your own way of succeeding. You see at some point in life, you more than likely have succeeded. Instead of determination, you have passion. Instead of flexibility, you are a perfectionist. Instead of imagination, you can communicate well. Instead of being naughty, you are efficient. Instead of a partner, you are well connecte…
Great comment. Successful entrepreneurs are often very hard to pigeonhole, and are often classified by others in ways that surprise them. Really, one quality would be your ability to succeed in spite of how other people estimate your chances or "relevant" abilities.