Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#51

Post by rsp1984 » Mon, Aug 18, 2014, 6:08 PM UTC

knighthacker wrote: post #32

1. The way I think about it is that you have a goal/vision for why you start the project. Having a co-founder is very important and necessary to achieve this goal because your business will run into a number of roadblocks that you need a partner to help you go through it. However, whether or not your co-founder works as hard as you is really irrelevant. You said that you are doing well financially and aren't starting…

I find myself so heavily disagreeing with almost every aspect of this advice, that I feel the strong urge to leave a response, although I did not intend to.

>Having a co-founder is very important and necessary to achieve this goal because your business will run into a number of roadblocks that you need a partner to help you go through it.

The most likely issue and road block for an early stage startup, especially one where founders are already doing well financially, is actually co-founder trouble.

> However, whether or not your co-founder works as hard as you is really irrelevant.

I cringe when I hear advice like this. I have been there. It has been one of the most demoralizing and depressing experiences of my entire life. Working your ass off for something while seeing your co-founder not really giving a shit simply doesn't work unless you intend to make a complete idiot out of yourself. Startups aren't socialist communities. Anyone who signs up should be aware of that.

> Then who cares if you "only" get 50% of the company?

Well then why not give up all of the company and give all of the shares to your co-founder slacking off? Company stake isn't only about the money. It is equally about control and about capital. Imagine having 50% for the "main" founder, 20% for the co-founder and 30% owned by angels / VCs who actually put assets into the company. Sounds like a better deal to me...

> The world is gonna pay you back in so many other ways than your 50%.

I am not sure how to express utmost disagreement with this. In the case of success you will get paid back exactly what has been agreed to in writing. Nobody will ever consider you the "spiritual" owner or founder of the company just because you say you worked harder. But everybody will consider you the real founder if your equity stake is higher. Simple as that.

> The other piece of advice is try to be really picky with your co-founders. Find ones that you trust and have worked with before or can get amazing references about.

Yes, this is good advice. However a startup can bring out really bad aspects of one's personality. Sometimes aspects you didn't know existed before you started the startup. Make sure you pick someone you know is loyal and handles stress well. These are the most important aspects of co-founder picking.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#52

Post by Envec83 » Mon, Aug 18, 2014, 6:09 PM UTC

ChristopherM wrote: post #16

Easiest solution of all, don't have a co-founder only employees. My work experience is software engineer and software development management. Having started my own company, I find I really enjoy handling the business side of things, forming the company, the paperwork, market research, designing logos, product vision etc etc. I really dread and despise any actual code development I have to do. Writing code is mentally…

Thanks for sharing your take on the issue Christopher.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#53

Post by fellars » Mon, Aug 18, 2014, 6:25 PM UTC

nathan-wailes wrote: post #43

fellars wrote: post #14

Ive been investigating the grunt fund [0] concept lately and plan to use it with my current startup to bring on a partner. I think it would go along way to ease your concerns. [0] Http://slicingpie.com

Not sure why this got downvoted, I didn't know about this book / site and just spent an hour watching a talk he gave at Stanford (he posted it on his site). I see some problems with his method but it looks like a step in the right direction.

I probably got downvoted because i failed to mention im not affiliated with this concept so it appears as though im self-promoting. So just to be clear i have no affiliation with it and just learned about it last week and read the book over the weekend and think this approach has a lot of merit.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#54

Post by texantbone » Mon, Aug 18, 2014, 6:58 PM UTC

The partnership charter is a great book that will help you form a framework for your relationship with your co-founder. http://www.amazon.com/The-Partnership-Charter-Start-Business...

Keep in mind, 50% of marriages fail and they have sex, so don't think it is easy or even natural.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#55

Post by ScottBurson » Mon, Aug 18, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

jason_tko wrote: post #31

michaelq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than dismissing my cofounder as terrible, I encourage you to consider the possibility that advice like yours, which we followed in cofounding the company, set him up for failure. Having specialization early on was a mistake. It was a difficult situation, and it wasn't entirely his fault that there was, for long stretches of time, little for him to do. A startup cycle goes something like this: initial theory ->…

It seems as though you're coming at this with a very different world view and set of experiences than me, which is fine. Maybe we can learn something from each other. To give two sentences of background, I've been running businesses for 13 years, and running a startup for 4 years. The first business I built by myself from nothing, and the second I built alongside my technical co-founder. Firstly I'm concerned that yo…

Very interesting discussion. I'm left thinking that these things depend very much on the kind of business you're trying to start. Some will have great need of a non-technical co-founder; others won't.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#56

Post by meowface » Mon, Aug 18, 2014, 11:07 PM UTC

michaelq wrote: post #10

jason_tko wrote: post #5

1. You don't. This is a legitimate fear. You get through it through communication. You say to the other person: "In the past, when I've co-founded projects; I felt I was doing a lot more than my co-founder. For instance, once we had the prototype done we started pitching it to clients, but for every 10 clients I pitched the product my co-founder would pitch to 1. I decided to abort the project as I didn't want to do…

> As an aside, the best co-founder relationships are formed on complimentary skill sets. You can do what they can't (or struggle with), and vice versa. As such, I would encourage you to find a sales person/designer/hustler, as opposed to another developer. On the face of it, this advice seems reasonable. But this advice will result in precisely the asymmetry to OP is worried about. If you have a technology product, I…

I know almost nothing of startups, but I feel like a non-technical (business) cofounder could still put in a lot of useful necessary work, especially if the company is just you and the other cofounders.

Marketing, promoting, sales, accounting, law, networking, researching... These are all things that I as a developer wouldn't want to deal with, even if I had the time to deal with them.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#57

Post by rajacombinator » Mon, Aug 18, 2014, 11:56 PM UTC

Just don't take a 50/50 cofounder, only give out equity in proportion to expected value added.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#58

Post by jason_tko » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 1:04 AM UTC

michaelq wrote: post #44

jason_tko wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems as though you're coming at this with a very different world view and set of experiences than me, which is fine. Maybe we can learn something from each other. To give two sentences of background, I've been running businesses for 13 years, and running a startup for 4 years. The first business I built by myself from nothing, and the second I built alongside my technical co-founder. Firstly I'm concerned that yo…

How did you build the product that your first business sold without a technical person onboard? You coded it yourself. Thus, you have technical skills. 9 years later, when you were looking for a cofounder, you decided to go with a technical cofounder. You can talk all you want, but at the end of the day, you chose to bring on a second technical cofounder (the first being yourself) over the business cofounder that you…

Again, I think you're mischaracterising me a little bit.

I can't code. I'm not a technical co-founder. My first business was not a software business, it was an IT infrastructure business.

In my first business, I discovered a need in the Japanese market for a good invoicing/document management software. It came about through me building a crappy invoice management system, and showing it to other Japanese business owners.

It was a little scary to work seriously on this, since there were no competitors, hence possibly no market.

However, I went out and did the following:

a) Designed and had built a crappy version of the software that was functional, but not elegant or scalable.

b) Talked with nearly a hundred potential users of this software to find out how they're currently solving this problem, and to try to get a sense of the market and the potential demand.

c) Found a group of people who were very interested in buying this software.

So by the time I found my co-founder, I had already invested hundreds of hours, and tens of thousands of dollars. However, I had a working prototype, many potential customers, and a good feel of the market.

It was a LOT of work. When people dismiss business co-founders as not doing a lot of work, or not doing meaningful work, it's both very irritating and also leads me to believe they've never worked with a 'real' business co-founder.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#59

Post by jason_tko » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 1:07 AM UTC

ScottBurson wrote: post #55

jason_tko wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems as though you're coming at this with a very different world view and set of experiences than me, which is fine. Maybe we can learn something from each other. To give two sentences of background, I've been running businesses for 13 years, and running a startup for 4 years. The first business I built by myself from nothing, and the second I built alongside my technical co-founder. Firstly I'm concerned that yo…

Very interesting discussion. I'm left thinking that these things depend very much on the kind of business you're trying to start. Some will have great need of a non-technical co-founder; others won't.

This is definitely an interesting discussion. However I think a startup requiring no business co-founder is very rare.

At the very least, if there are two technical co-founders, one has to spend a lot of their time doing business activities.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome the fear of doing more than your co-founder?

#60

Post by chiBT » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 7:42 AM UTC

jason_tko wrote: post #58

michaelq wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you build the product that your first business sold without a technical person onboard? You coded it yourself. Thus, you have technical skills. 9 years later, when you were looking for a cofounder, you decided to go with a technical cofounder. You can talk all you want, but at the end of the day, you chose to bring on a second technical cofounder (the first being yourself) over the business cofounder that you…

Again, I think you're mischaracterising me a little bit. I can't code. I'm not a technical co-founder. My first business was not a software business, it was an IT infrastructure business. In my first business, I discovered a need in the Japanese market for a good invoicing/document management software. It came about through me building a crappy invoice management system, and showing it to other Japanese business owne…

Jason sounds like you have been where I am now. When you found your co-founders, after all that work, how did you split the equity? I'm a business founder looking for co-founders and I want to be fair but fair to myself as well.