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Why I'll be a solo founder next time

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Re: Why I'll be a solo founder next time

#61

Post by ch4ch4 »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #12

I think it's important to be honest with oneself about the motivations for starting a business with somebody else. From what I see, some entrepreneurs don't want to go it alone because they believe there's safety in numbers. If you're leaving a good job, have a family to take care of, etc., it can be easier to convince yourself that you're doing the right thing if someone else is taking the plunge with you. This is a…

Completely agree with what you said, but I think you mean "complementary", not "complimentary".

Re: Why I'll be a solo founder next time

#62

Post by dnautics »

"Co-founders can complement each other’s skillsets, provide psychological support, and prevent you from chasing down a rabbit hole or losing sight of the big picture."

I'm a solo founder of a nonprofit (we haven't launched yet). Of course the rules are different, we don't have to "ship" anything, and there's almost no time pressure, but I find that I can get those things from my board. They were picked very carefully to get diverse domain experience and because I know I can trust them to provide intelligent ideas (they're all wicked smart) and I know I can trust them to provide moral guidance, very important for a nonprofit.

I surmise that for a solo founder for-profit, finding people who can help you with those very important assets is necessary, but you might be able to find it outside of a "co-foundership".

Re: Why I'll be a solo founder next time

#63

Post by beat »

What I'm learning as an early stage solo founder...

1. Not having co-founders is no excuse to not work. I want to turn this idea in my head into a working product. Saying you can't do it because you don't have a co-founder is an excuse, not a reason. It's not impossible, merely harder.

2. The critical problem is bandwidth. I'm day-jobbing to make ends meet, which bites even more into my time. My primary challenge now is finding a way to go full time, either with funding or with a revenue-generating subset of the functionality.

3. I'm the visionary. If I can find a technical co-founder to take over the coding work, great - better, even, because coding is bad for my big-picture focus. But ultimately, it's my product and my vision. If I find "co-founders" at this point, it will likely be just a label to make investors happy. In practice, they will be early employees.

4. Team-building, on the other hand, is going well. I'm a social person, an extrovert, and I can generate a pretty decent reality distortion field. I've been able to get help so far as I've needed it, and I think this will continue. Part of this comes from not asking too much of people, which is what the usual co-founder issue seems to be.

Re: Why I'll be a solo founder next time

#64

Post by steveklabnik »

dragonwriter wrote: post #38
steveklabnik wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple doesn't need to have the _same_ direction, they just need to have compatible ones. For example, a programmer married to a doctor. They have two different directions, but if the only real compatibility requirement is that they live in the same city, then seems fine.

> A couple doesn't need to have the _same_ direction, they just need to have compatible ones. To the extent that its true, it equally true of partnerships (unsurprisingly, marriage really is a kind of partnership.) They direction must be the same within the scope of the partnership (profession is outside the scope of the partnership in marriage), and the direction outside the scope of partnership must be compatible w…

Absolutely, I'm not saying this isn't true in a startup. I'm saying this tweaked 'scope' is the important part, not that the directions are identical.

Re: Why I'll be a solo founder next time

#65

Post by mef »

Heads up, your blog (https://blog.cameralends.com/) gives me the red screen of evil on Chrome:

You attempted to reach blog.cameralends.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as *.herokuapp.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of blog.cameralends.com.

Re: Why I'll be a solo founder next time

#66

Post by ChuckMcM »

regal wrote: post #50
RyanZAG wrote: post #3

Interesting points, but a lot of it is contradictory to the advice you hear from successful startups, so I'd take this with a grain of salt. "I believe that my previous two ventures failed mainly because of the founding team (which I’m included in). How do I know? Because companies with almost identical products and value propositions succeeded afterwards. " I'm not sure if you're drawing the correct lesson there. So…

I'll chime in here and say that reading this article sounded exactly like reading about my own 3 previous (failed) partnerships. My sole successful venture has been solo all along (not including employees), and has outlasted the rises and falls of the other businesses (during the amateur entrepreneur "too many fingers in too many pies" phase). I don't think I'd do a partnership again. But maybe I just don't play well…

I suspect this is a key insight. There is a colloquialism for a company of people all trying to be 'the boss' called "Too many Chiefs, not enough Indians" (in reference to the tribal organization of Native American tribes, where in fact there was exactly one Chief who was the final arbiter) but another spin on this is "Too many Medicine men, not enough Indians."

The "fantasy" life of a startup founder is that they see things others don't (vision) and lead people who make those visions real (workers). Except you can't really lead someone with a vision if you don't know yourself how to make that vision real.

The challenges of startups are that you have to be able to "do it all" in order to know what "doing it" actually entails, then you can bring people in who can do a part of it (that you were previously doing) and know if they are doing it well or not. Folks who are visionary in their thinking but can't break that down into actionable steps toward that vision, and then break those steps into problem assignments, aren't really going to be an asset for your startup until you already have a product and a revenue stream.

Even then, there is nothing more irritating to folks than a clueless visionary. Someone who says something like "The underlying problem is energy dependence, so our goal should be to provide an unlimited energy source to break that dependence, let's get some smart people working on that!" Accurate vision, but ultimately clueless, they just slow people down who have to explain the 2nd law of thermodynamics to them (if they are patient enough).

Re: Why I'll be a solo founder next time

#67

Post by lhnz »

There is a correlation between startup success and "founding teams" therefore investors often use the existence of a team as a proxy for a higher probability of success.

Teams can have convexity or concavity effects - that is, they have the opportunity to make you a lot more successful or a lot more unsuccessful.

Since it's hard to tell the difference between a good team and a bad team there's a lot of room for people to to create inauthentic signals by bundling together impressive-looking people that form bad teams. Therefore the heuristic of "a founding team exists" is easily gamed [0] to the point that it's losing its utility. However, since in a few cases it's exceedingly important to the success of the startup, and because of information asymmetry faced by investors it's one of the only good signals for success.

On a generalised individual startup level it was probably always more harmful than it was profitable.

In practice ask yourself:

Do you feel this person will help your company to succeed or are you just adding them because you've been told that this makes a startup more investable? If it's truly the former then take the risk; otherwise be careful, work hard and increase your exposure to suitable co-founders.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_Law

Re: Why I'll be a solo founder next time

#68

Post by steveklabnik »

hnal943 wrote: post #44
steveklabnik wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple doesn't need to have the _same_ direction, they just need to have compatible ones. For example, a programmer married to a doctor. They have two different directions, but if the only real compatibility requirement is that they live in the same city, then seems fine.

I think what you're describing is exactly the same situation in which start up founders find themselves. The couple needs to agree on the direction and organization of their family, just like the founders need to agree on the direction and organization of their company. For example, a couple needs to agree on: * How to divide up responsibilities at home * Expectations of income (who works? how much?) * Whether or not…

Absolutely. I only used physical proximity because it's a clear example; even relationships don't even need physical proximity at all times. I myself have spent most of the year away from my long(est)-term partner, because we explicitly agreed to pursue other goals over proximity.

Re: Why I'll be a solo founder next time

#70

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

ch4ch4 wrote: post #61
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #12

I think it's important to be honest with oneself about the motivations for starting a business with somebody else. From what I see, some entrepreneurs don't want to go it alone because they believe there's safety in numbers. If you're leaving a good job, have a family to take care of, etc., it can be easier to convince yourself that you're doing the right thing if someone else is taking the plunge with you. This is a…

Completely agree with what you said, but I think you mean "complementary", not "complimentary".

Good catch. Although in line with my comment, some entrepreneurs are looking for complimentary co-founders. :)
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