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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

#31

Post by vinceguidry »

PaulHoule wrote: post #28
kbuchanan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

I'm continually amazed by the number of recruiters I work with who lack the communication skills needed to do their jobs in an environment where everybody's increasingly picky. You'd think they'd step up, considering it can mean the difference between a $30k year and a $200k one, but most of them continually choose low-effort, low-reward paths. It doesn't make that much of a difference to me whether any one recruiter can land me a role. I'll get one eventually. But it matters to the tune of $X0k to them. Boggles my mind.

I need to start coming up with filters to weed the grifters out. Spending 10+ hours on a homework assignment only to find something important wasn't communicated is getting old.

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#32

Post by TremendousJudge »

jordiee wrote: post #7
e40 wrote: post #2

What I wonder (and search for "hours" had 0 hits) is the number of hours solo founders put in vs 2+ founders. I founded a company with 5 founds, 3 of which were in daily operations. It was a lot of work and I can't imagine doing a lot of that early work by myself (until there was enough revenue to support hiring).

As a solo founder of a SaaS launching next month, I tracked my time and am at 1350ish hour in the past 10 months. This is my first startup so I made some mistakes along the way with future creep so deadlines got pushed. I worked around 35 - 40 hours outside of my full-time job a week. Felt really burnt out so skipped one month of work 3 months ago but finally trying to get into the mindset of sales and marketing. I d…

so you've been working 80 hours a week for almost a year now?

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#34

Post by crispytx »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #22

If you're lacking a skill, hire an employee, don't invite a second founder. He who manages the accounting controls the company. If you must have a co-founder, makes sure he works as long/hard as you do.

This. I hate hearing all this co-founder stuff all the time. While I'm sure it works for some people, I've found the whole co-founder thing to be a terrible idea. The only positive benefit I've found is having someone to talk to about what you're working on, but I haven't found co-founders to be helpful other than that in the cheerleader department.

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#35

Post by airocker »

trjordan wrote: post #12

Two founders are better than one when one of the key problems you will face is hiring. One founder hasn't proven they can recruit. Two founders have proved they can convince at least one other idiot to join them. This is important for VC businesses, where hiring quickly is the only way to grow. But it's not important for smaller businesses, where cash management matters more.

Is being able to recruit the most important trait? I think it is overall selling that matters. Why can selling potential not be demonstrated by other means? Playing with human relationships can come later.

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#37

Post by coralreef »

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…

Programmers tend to want to hack and not care about sales/marketing/everything else.

It turns out that doing "sales/marketing/everything else" is of significant value when building a business.

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#38

Post by _hyn3 »

Ten cynical reasons why VC's like to see multiple founders:

10. Sometimes (perhaps rarely) a better idea comes from a group.

9. There really is a lot of work to go around.

8. If one of the founders is willing to sell, take more investment or worse terms, perhaps they can apply pressure to the ones who are reluctant.

7. Most humans like to be around other humans, so cooperation is the norm among people who self-group.

6. Expertise can be complementary and allow a natural division of labor in the early days.

5. Hard feelings are more evenly distributed as the founders get pushed out or diluted one-by-one; push out the weakest contributors and least resistant first.

4. More founders = reduced risk and decreased dependency on one possibly loose cannon

3. If the board stops getting along with one founder, perhaps another will be a better fit. (see: Twitter)

2. Multiple complementary founders are rarely of one mind, and therefore it's easy to split control.

.. and the number one reason why VC's like multiple founders:

1. Extra founders cost them nothing

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#39

Post by pkaye »

coralreef wrote: post #37
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…

Programmers tend to want to hack and not care about sales/marketing/everything else. It turns out that doing "sales/marketing/everything else" is of significant value when building a business.

Well look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?

Re: Two creators are not always better than one

#40

Post by _hyn3 »

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 agree that this is a thing with VC's, but the claimed logic behind it is not credible.

If you are able to recruit founders to work with each other, you didn't prove anything that couldn't be just as easily proven by recruiting a VC to invest in you.

And if it's not sales/hype that we're trying to prove, but instead a technical review by a potential co-founder, then that's what technical due diligence is for.

To me, a much better test is whether or not they've managed to get a believable proof of concept or even actual traction all by themselves, without any help and without even a co-founder.

That is a much better proof point. (leaving out of the discussion other salient points like market size, growth rate, etc)

Being able to attract another idiot who might not know anything at all about the problem domain, or gets excited about it for a few weeks or months, or "joins" five different startups in six months in the hopes that one of them gets funded.. this proves nothing of value.

Convincing a VC to fund you at reasonable terms? Much harder than finding a pliant co-founder if you have even mediocre skills at marketing/sales.

The real reasons VC's want multiple founders aren't really talked about, because they're not flattering to VC's: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18924243

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