Great article, will you be my co-founder?
Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!
81–90 of 98 posts
Re: Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!
#82Man. Makes me want to create a satire post titled: Absolutely, DO NOT, get married! This is an argument for being VERY careful about your co-founder and having good agreements in place when disagreements occur.
You presume you have to have a cofounder...even that having a cofounder is an advantage-- while you recognize the results of having one.
I'm telling you that there is no significant advantage of consensus management-- that there is a big detriment.
Re: Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!
#83If you want to start something, and nobody is interested in your idea or you can't find anyone good enough - Just start it alone. If you have an idea, and you know a fellow co-founder that's interested in starting up - Just start it with him and work together. Bottom line: Instead of thinking about the non-essential stuff- Just get the first prototype up even if it might mean doing it yourself. Any school of thoughts…
Exactly. And be aware of the risks. As a solo founder you need people you can bounce ideas off of. (And in my opinion this is the purpose of an advisory board, or even friends who have no skin in the game)... and as a group of co-founders you have the serious risk of conflict among the group.
Re: Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!
#84I think you are confusing founders with leaders. Companies do not need multiple leaders. Just like teams, however, they do need multiple players, each providing different skills.
Actually, I'm not confusing them, PG is. What I advocate is having a single leader, and whether you call employees 2-4 "co-founders" or not, they all know who is boss.
PG thinks that you have to have consensus and multiple founders all with an equal say. Thus, multiple leaders.
The whole cofounder thing has taken on quite a weird perspective-- I think because PG doesn't have much experience with it, but is adamant, and most of his readers have never worked for a startup, let alone started one, so they believe he's preaching the gospel.
There has to be a leader, that's my point.
Re: Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
The plane analogy doesn't work because dual engine planes are more reliable than single engine planes... unlike founding teams, engine can't decide that they want to go in different directions and engines are not insecure, ego driven, or prone to misunderstanding each other. Nor do engines have investors coming in sowing dissent between them. If you look at the empirical evidence, you will see that most successful co…
First, what dual engine and single engine planes have to do with PG's comparison? He was referring to the fact that if a component of a thing statically represents the number one problem (for example the car's engine breaking down), it doesn't mean you should remove that component (the engine). Secondly, while I agree with you that if you planned everything by yourself and are willing to do it alone, you shouldn't ju…
Dauntless--
No need to warn me, I've seen the strife of having co-founders, and I've seen the harmony of having a solo found er and co-founder teams that lasted 20 years.
I don't think its a factor of finding "good" co-founders. I think unless you have known the person a long time, you can't know if they are "good" or not- its not whether they are good or not, as the most earnest, responsible, loyal and considerate founder may still be the death of your company. Its fundamental to the nature of trying to manage a company by consensus.
Consensus management doesn't work- or we'd be up to our ears in all the communes the hippies started in the 60s and 70s.
Re: Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
The plane analogy doesn't work because dual engine planes are more reliable than single engine planes... unlike founding teams, engine can't decide that they want to go in different directions and engines are not insecure, ego driven, or prone to misunderstanding each other. Nor do engines have investors coming in sowing dissent between them. If you look at the empirical evidence, you will see that most successful co…
evidence? pg hasn't given any either, but he gets somewhat more starting cred than you by virtue of staking his own money on his belief. (If his advice doesn't work, he gets low returns on his investments). You two are stating as fact two contradictory things, and I (and probably most readers) am unwilling to take your statements as fact without evidence. Can you point me to any studies about the failure rates of sta…
My original post was based on my experience. PG responded with absolute (and absolutely asinine) claims about statistics. I'd like to see him provide some evidence. Giving him more "starting cred" is the problem with the YC way of doing things- its a cult of personality and the personality in question gives some good advice but also some bad advice.
However, you can look at any list of the richest people, or any list of successful startups, and you'll note that most of them were founded by individuals. Though you gotta restrict your data to companies that have lasted a decade or so- otherwise you havent' given the founding teams time to split apart.
Re: Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
The plane analogy doesn't work because dual engine planes are more reliable than single engine planes... unlike founding teams, engine can't decide that they want to go in different directions and engines are not insecure, ego driven, or prone to misunderstanding each other. Nor do engines have investors coming in sowing dissent between them. If you look at the empirical evidence, you will see that most successful co…
I haven't seen statistics on single founder vs multiple founder startups. I'm not sure if there are any, or the massive biases they would exhibit because most startups die without ever leaving a trace. Most of the companies you've worked for had multiple founders - to be get big enough to hire someone is a measure of success. I think history likes to write stories about single men of vision - especially in the establ…
actually, most of the companies I've worked for were started by an individual, and most of the successful ones were as well.
But my point is that there has to be someone in charge. You can have "cofounders" so long as they know that the buck stops with you. (Or you can be a cofounder so long as you know the buck stops with someone.)
Re: Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!
#88For instance, look at plentyoffish.com
Not only did this guy not get a cofounder, he has never gotten any employees. He's making millions by himself, a total solo effort.
In fact there area lot of examples out there of people doing this... many of them are of the professional blogging/seo/domainer variety. What people on here would deride as "lifestyle businesses" (Personally I don't think you get to deride someone's choices until you've done better than them.)
But further, there's a whole movement of "micro-isvs" - a poor term as it came from someone with a microsoft perspective-- but these are people who make software themselves and sell it. Many of these businesses are on their way to becoming large enterprises. Omni Group is an example of one that's had several years, but Delicious Monster is one that's only been at it a few years- very successful, good number of employees now, single founder. And of course there's scores more.
You know, what we really need is a version of TechCrunch- but one that covers these non-VC backed startups- the companies that won't get coverage in TechCrunch because they are not following the latest fad and burning money on lavish parties to invite Michael Arrington to. For all the little companies you never heard of on TecCrunch there are other little companies who are going to be more successful ... but are under the radar now. I think this is what leads to a distorted perspective of the startup landscape.
Re: Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!
#89Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder for the sake of getting a co-founder.
And don't for a second think that getting a cofounder is a requirement for success.
Re: Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!
#90I'm really on the fence about this because both arguments have truth to them. If you look at many successful companies, they were often founded by two people. However you'll also find that usually one of the founders leaves eventually (usually after a short while compared to overall lifetime of the company), and the other stays to run the company. I can give a whole bunch of examples. Apple: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozn…
Hey, don't forget that Paul Allen left Microsoft with cancer. Once he went into remission, he didn't go back to work, he decided to take care of himself and put his billions to use. Pretty easy decision, IMO.
Woz never wanted to run a company, he just wanted to build stuff. (Shameless plug for Chapter 3 of Jessica's book, Founders at Work).
For every example you cite, there's probably a new story line.