Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 106 posts

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#91

Post by lumost »

snowmaker wrote: post #48

Hello - I'm one of the people at YC who work on YC's co-founder matching site (which, if you aren't familiar with it, is at https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching ). It's not totally clear to me if OP is referring to that product specifically or something else, but I figured I would take the opportunity to get feedback anyway! We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear…

Anecdotally I think some training on preseed/seed funding may be beneficial.

I’ve met more than a few pre seed folks who are focused on equity retention. This is all well and good for a few exceptional founders, and they are welcome to seek out a compatible match. However there should be an asterisk on when people are looking for a founding engineer or otherwise giving out marginal equity.

I had a few such meetings which were educational- but ultimately non productive as it would not make financial sense for me to join a seed stage firm for less than a 50% stake. Of course the discussion is different for later stage firms.

That being said the speed dating events were fantastic.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#92

Post by hoc »

analyst74 wrote: post #77
benguild wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’d be great if you could find a way to screen out “lurkers” and “shoppers” … in other words, people who just like the idea of having a startup

I wish the same! My first couple weeks on co-founder matching were consumed with meeting a wide range of folks, most of whom in the "I'd like to start a company if the right co-founder / idea / other criteria present themselves" stage. One thing that seems to reduce the noise is selecting "I'm working full time on my startup" and make that a requirement for co-founder. But it would be nice to also meet those who are…

I actually would like to talk to people who really want to run a startup (with on of my great pre-developed ideas) in a somehow coordinated way and get a five percent stake in the company or something. Is there a good place for that (other than putting it on Hackster)?

I met people with great ideas, ones with great skillsets, ones with great management and leadership skills, and you just can have all those things vary over time in your life.

The question is, but also for the classic startup, how stable and dedicated would such a construct be. The need for fame, money or just joy of development also varies over time, so I would guess there should be a way to bring those interest together into a working construct without necessarily judging up front that this is not the real deal. Lots of CXXs are just employees in a company they did not found themselves after all. Still they receive shares of their company. So why not start with that as the base right away.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#93

Post by sdrinf »

lumost wrote: post #91
snowmaker wrote: post #48

Hello - I'm one of the people at YC who work on YC's co-founder matching site (which, if you aren't familiar with it, is at https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching ). It's not totally clear to me if OP is referring to that product specifically or something else, but I figured I would take the opportunity to get feedback anyway! We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear…

Anecdotally I think some training on preseed/seed funding may be beneficial. I’ve met more than a few pre seed folks who are focused on equity retention. This is all well and good for a few exceptional founders, and they are welcome to seek out a compatible match. However there should be an asterisk on when people are looking for a founding engineer or otherwise giving out marginal equity. I had a few such meetings w…

"Founding engineers" are employees. The site is for finding cofounders. Using the site for hiring is strictly against the rules -strongly advise letting that know to people who are doing this and/or report them directly on the site. We really really don't want the site to degrade into another jobsearch tool.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#94

Post by snowmaker »

lumost wrote: post #91
snowmaker wrote: post #48

Hello - I'm one of the people at YC who work on YC's co-founder matching site (which, if you aren't familiar with it, is at https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching ). It's not totally clear to me if OP is referring to that product specifically or something else, but I figured I would take the opportunity to get feedback anyway! We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear…

Anecdotally I think some training on preseed/seed funding may be beneficial. I’ve met more than a few pre seed folks who are focused on equity retention. This is all well and good for a few exceptional founders, and they are welcome to seek out a compatible match. However there should be an asterisk on when people are looking for a founding engineer or otherwise giving out marginal equity. I had a few such meetings w…

Yes, this is definitely something that was happening.

We recently added a question to the profile about "equity expectations" to try to solve this. I'm hopeful that will help, because then you can just not match with people who don't align with your expectations; would love any feedback on this.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#95

Post by iamleppert »

The crux of the issue is that YC funnels its rejects into "YC Startup School" which gets the associated marketing for "YC Co-Founder Matching". Beyond a basic form, there isn't really much (if any) consideration for matching. I did it and noticed that there were three types of users on the platform:

- Those who had been rejected by YC and funneled into Startup School w/co-founder matching. Not sure what the intent of this was...a bunch of people with their rejected startups all mushed in together?

- Those who never applied, but were under the impression that doing YC Startup School or co-founder matching somehow would increase their odds of getting into YC. Everyone from this group thought of it as some type of admissions process to YC.

- Outright scams and people who had blank LinkedIn profiles and 0 experience (tells me that there is no or very little quality control on who is accepted to the matching)

Everyone I met from the first two groups already had their own startup going and wanted me to join, and also said everyone they talked to had their own startups and were trying to recruit from within the same pool.

I met some interesting people through the process but overall it was ineffective. I would think a more focused search using traditional tools and platforms (LinkedIn, etc) and marketing would be a lot more effective.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#96

Post by lumost »

snowmaker wrote: post #94
lumost wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I think some training on preseed/seed funding may be beneficial. I’ve met more than a few pre seed folks who are focused on equity retention. This is all well and good for a few exceptional founders, and they are welcome to seek out a compatible match. However there should be an asterisk on when people are looking for a founding engineer or otherwise giving out marginal equity. I had a few such meetings w…

Yes, this is definitely something that was happening. We recently added a question to the profile about "equity expectations" to try to solve this. I'm hopeful that will help, because then you can just not match with people who don't align with your expectations; would love any feedback on this.

> would love any feedback on this.

It's a great feature, however I suspect that you may get too many "I'm flexible" entries relative to how flexible people actually are. In practice I'm probably flexible on equity expectations if a well known engineer/founder wanted to partner with me - or X MM had been secured for funding.

While it might be too much information for a profile, allowing individuals to indicate equity preferences for specific company valuations in their match preferences might guide both parties to the right deal.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#97

Post by Brajeshwar »

I found my current co-founder on HackerNews. He is lurking somewhere here. This indeed was along the timeline where YC was introducing the co-founder matching. Startup School already was testing it and I was part of that.

I was matched with quite a few good ones but were on different agendas in life. Two of the ones I know are part of YCombinator now. Quite a lot of them were also pretty shallow and spammy/scammy. But then I think that is part of the deal.

I already had a co-founder (business) and I'm fairly technical. But I needed a hard-core Machine Learning Geospatial person who have meddled with the pigs in the AI mud.

I remembering writing about it more like a job here on Hackernews and we ended up talking about satellites, precision agriculture, climate, and sustainability. After two years, we are still struggling together to building something that we are very proud now and in future, not just for us but for our kids and their friends. :-)

Btw, my prior co-founder got a Government Job in a reputed institute in India. We are no longer co-founders but continue to be friends, hoping that we will something to work together on.

P.S. I'm not actively looking but would love to talk to someone who loves finding ways to curb climate change and is extremely good at sales. I'm getting better at it but far from what I want to be. I want to learn more together and we still have a big chunk of equity reserved for the right person. :-)

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#98

Post by quickthrower2 »

exolymph wrote: post #16

Cofounder matching is a market for lemons, much like online dating. The best prospects are either never on the open market, or get snapped up very quickly. So it's always a problem of sorting through many low-quality options to find diamonds in the rough (and if you can find one, upgrading a rough diamond to a shiny diamond is still a nontrivial process). Point being, cofounder matching is inherently a frustrating gr…

Used cars are a market for lemons. Maybe less so these days as they are more mechanically reliable.

But dating and cofounding isn’t. People with nothing wrong with them break up, become single, appear on dating sites.

People who are great cofounders may decide to work in great jobs first.

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#99

Post by desaiguddu »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #97

I found my current co-founder on HackerNews. He is lurking somewhere here. This indeed was along the timeline where YC was introducing the co-founder matching. Startup School already was testing it and I was part of that. I was matched with quite a few good ones but were on different agendas in life. Two of the ones I know are part of YCombinator now. Quite a lot of them were also pretty shallow and spammy/scammy. Bu…

Excellent insights!

Re: Ask HN: YC co-founder matching is bad

#100

Post by fakedang »

ezekg wrote: post #64

I've thought about this too. I tried YC's co-founder matching, looking for a co-founder for my current company. But it's all new founders (i.e. no experience running or even building a company). It's kind of like Indie Hackers -- it's full of wantrepreneurs (nothing wrong with that!), with very little entrepreneurs. There's gotta be a better way.

Every entrepreneur was a wantrepreneur once.
Post reply on HN