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Two creators are not always better than one

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Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#21

Post by babaganoosh89 »

njarboe wrote: post #13

I think the reason Y-combinator and others like to see two or more founders is that at least those two people are willing to work with/for each other. It is a rough filtering mechanism, and probably a very useful one, especially if your philosophy is that technical people make great business founders. More honestly it is "Technical people can make great startup founders, but first filter on if they can recruit one ot…

It's a filtering mechanism and also 2+ founders working for a company below market wages is more valuable than 1 founder working for below market wages.

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#23

Post by deepGem »

ben_jones wrote: post #19
njarboe wrote: post #13

I think the reason Y-combinator and others like to see two or more founders is that at least those two people are willing to work with/for each other. It is a rough filtering mechanism, and probably a very useful one, especially if your philosophy is that technical people make great business founders. More honestly it is "Technical people can make great startup founders, but first filter on if they can recruit one ot…

When I was 20 I met a businessman in his mid-30s at a meetup in SF. At the time I knew a small amount of web development and was looking for work, any work, to start my career after dropping out of college. This was just as Blockchain was starting to be more then a whisper and he wanted to create something with it for the financial industry. He was obsessed with getting into YC but lamented how after talking to sever…

From what I have heard, YC is pretty good at sniffing such teams out during an interview and also while reading the application. It's hard to fake good co-founding relationships.

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#24

Post by PaulHoule »

njarboe wrote: post #13

I think the reason Y-combinator and others like to see two or more founders is that at least those two people are willing to work with/for each other. It is a rough filtering mechanism, and probably a very useful one, especially if your philosophy is that technical people make great business founders. More honestly it is "Technical people can make great startup founders, but first filter on if they can recruit one ot…

I think it is affirmative action for non-technical cofounders if you ask me.

The non-technical cofounders who become VCs want to support people who remind them of themselves in the past.

This is why founder dating is like dating at a tech school. There are many non-technical cofounders who bring nothing to the table except the desire to make a huge amount of money. That is something to work with, but it is by no means enough in a world where billions of people are hungry.

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#25

Post by mgamache »

The title of the article should be: "2 founders are not always better than 1 for Kickstarter"

Also, they didn't define success. I bet it was just getting the project funded. The bar for VC success and Kickstarter are very different. Kickstarter doesn't have growth and ROI requirements. This might be a proxy for a lifestyle business, but not VC funded companies.

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#27

Post by kbuchanan »

PaulHoule wrote: post #24
njarboe wrote: post #13

I think the reason Y-combinator and others like to see two or more founders is that at least those two people are willing to work with/for each other. It is a rough filtering mechanism, and probably a very useful one, especially if your philosophy is that technical people make great business founders. More honestly it is "Technical people can make great startup founders, but first filter on if they can recruit one ot…

I think it is affirmative action for non-technical cofounders if you ask me. The non-technical cofounders who become VCs want to support people who remind them of themselves in the past. This is why founder dating is like dating at a tech school. There are many non-technical cofounders who bring nothing to the table except the desire to make a huge amount of money. That is something to work with, but it is by no mean…

This is an extraordinarily myopic view of business. Most firms do not create new tech; all firms (including tech startups) need individuals capable of selling, winning over the faith of others (recruiting), and who have an eye for creating business processes and operations for delivery, support, and so on. To watch engineers attempt to do all these things on their own is also a comedy.

This idea reminds me of things developers say to disparage anyone who operates on a higher abstraction layer than they do (e.g. Rust sucks cause it's not C. Ruby sucks cause it's for beginners. Salesforce sucks cause it's not real programming.)

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#28

Post by PaulHoule »

kbuchanan wrote: post #27
PaulHoule wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is affirmative action for non-technical cofounders if you ask me. The non-technical cofounders who become VCs want to support people who remind them of themselves in the past. This is why founder dating is like dating at a tech school. There are many non-technical cofounders who bring nothing to the table except the desire to make a huge amount of money. That is something to work with, but it is by no mean…

This is an extraordinarily myopic view of business. Most firms do not create new tech; all firms (including tech startups) need individuals capable of selling, winning over the faith of others (recruiting), and who have an eye for creating business processes and operations for delivery, support, and so on. To watch engineers attempt to do all these things on their own is also a comedy. This idea reminds me of things…

Maybe 1/4 of people who want to be non-technical co-founders really bring something to the table.

It is a black comedy to see how many salesmen could not sell, how many recruiters cannot recruit, how many businesses recruit people at great expense to lose them because they use them in a boneheaded way, etc.

I've seen many people who think they are working at a high abstraction level while they are really ignoring a large number of inconvenient truths.

Given that so many businesses need web sites that are a variation on a theme I wonder why there isn't an accelerator that has a captive dev shop that is highly productive making e-commerce sites that are variations of a theme based on a fixed framework.

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#29

Post by baxtr »

Even though the method can be challenged, I think it is great that people are trying to understand entrepreneurship based on data. Most founder and startup advice is not based on any data. YC could have a great impact here I believe with the vast amount of data they should have
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