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How to thrive as a solo non-technical founder

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Re: How to thrive as a solo non-technical founder

#31

Post by shazow »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #30
shazow wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You call it pattern recognition, I call it excuses. Setting high expectations for yourself is crucial to achieving them. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect

Yes you're right it's partly an excuse (40%) but also a way (60%) for me to try and find the reasons for why I and others in my family have failed so I can change myself and stop making the same mistakes. I have a problem with your advice. I already had and still have high expectations for myself, my family does too. That's not working. The problem with my dreams, ideas, and goals is that they are coming from me. I a…

Fair enough, here's another piece of advice: Surround yourself with people who are better than you, especially the types of people you'd like to become more like. Conversely, avoid people who are averse to the change you're experiencing and drag you down from becoming the person you want to be.

You spoke of male friends who are failures—those are the people you want to avoid. Start hanging out a lot more with your successful female friends, find mentors who will help guide you to improvement, get a job where you feel like the stupidest person in the room.

This goes back to setting high expectations for yourself. You're not the only variable.

Re: How to thrive as a solo non-technical founder

#32

Post by ericd »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #29
ericd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of guys doing huge things very successfully. Bezos just located an Apollo rocket on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean . James Cameron has gone from being one of the most successful film directors to being one of the most successful deep divers of all time. These are bold things that were successful. Being a risk taker causes a higher variance in ones endeavors, which implies some spectacular failures, b…

I should have emphasized more on the fact that this is what I'm seeing with the men and women that -> I <- know and have met. Those successful men you mentioned obviously have behaviors that I (or anyone in my family) don't have. It's just that in my life I'm seeing more of those behaviors in women than in men. Leading me to feel this way. I shouldn't, I know. It's illogical and I deserve the downvotes for such a loa…

Ah ok, gotcha. I personally know a bunch of very successful guys and gals both, so maybe you just need to meet a wider variety of people. I've mostly lived in urban areas (Boston, NYC, Silicon Valley), though, so that probably skews my own sample pretty badly.

Re: How to thrive as a solo non-technical founder

#33

Post by amirhhz »

limedaring wrote: post #28
hkarthik wrote: post #16

This is a great story. As a visionary who clearly doesn't mind getting her hands dirty and has design skills you seem like every tech co-founder's dream! I'm honestly surprised you had difficulty finding a tech co-founder before launching. I'm dabbling with the idea of becoming a tech cofounder for someone, so I'd like to know what were the criteria that you looked for in a tech cofounder and how did you finally find…

"As a visionary who clearly doesn't mind getting her hands dirty and has design skills you seem like every tech co-founder's dream! I'm honestly surprised you had difficulty finding a tech co-founder before launching." The difficulty wasn't in finding a tech cofounder — I had one back in the day, went through a whole "interview" process with people from my original post that got on HN. The problem was knowing someone…

What would you say about trying to identify a potential co-founder's underlying motivation (money, experience, small team/flexibility, fame, actually caring about the market, etc.) for joining a start-up?

I'm actually asking from the perspective of a technical person who finds it hard to trust/gel with potential non-tech founders, but I thought perhaps you had some thoughts :)

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