Are Co-Founders in the Same City Really an Advantage to a Start-Up? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are Co-Founders in the Same City Really an Advantage to a Start-Up?

#11

Post by tonystubblebine » Mon, Jul 21, 2008, 4:51 AM UTC

jasonfried wrote: post #8

FWIW, David and I worked together 7 time zones apart for 4 years or so before he finally came to Chicago in 2006. David wrote the code for Basecamp in Copenhagen and I designed the interface in Chicago. The distance was a big advantage to us. It helped us each focus on what we were good at without too much meddling. When you're close it's real easy to spend time worrying about stuff that doesn't matter. When you're f…

Jason, would you say that one of your major strengths is finding ways to take advantage of whatever situation you find yourself in? I'd wager that 37s would have done just fine if you'd started in the same city. So maybe the lesson to the poster should just be: stop worrying and get back to business.

Re: Are Co-Founders in the Same City Really an Advantage to a Start-Up?

#12

Post by curiousgeorge » Mon, Jul 21, 2008, 6:59 AM UTC

jimgreer wrote: post #3

As the company grows, the extra friction on communications between the two locations becomes more of a problem. My company, Kongregate, has 10 people in San Francisco and 5 in Portland, Oregon. We make it work through all the methods you describe, but the couple of weeks a year when we all gather in the same place are definitely easier.

I love you guys. Thanks for finding a business model that helps support independent game developers like whoever wrote that Desktop Tower Defense game.

Re: Are Co-Founders in the Same City Really an Advantage to a Start-Up?

#13

Post by rantfoil » Mon, Jul 21, 2008, 9:20 AM UTC

jasonfried wrote: post #8

FWIW, David and I worked together 7 time zones apart for 4 years or so before he finally came to Chicago in 2006. David wrote the code for Basecamp in Copenhagen and I designed the interface in Chicago. The distance was a big advantage to us. It helped us each focus on what we were good at without too much meddling. When you're close it's real easy to spend time worrying about stuff that doesn't matter. When you're f…

I would echo these sentiments. Sachin and I worked on Posterous.com remotely (I was in Mountain View and he was in NYC) for the months before we applied and were accepted to YC Summer 2008. We could work independently for long stretches and get large pieces of functionality done fast just over IM.

In fact, we've found this summer in Cambridge that the times we've been really able to crank out code are the weekends when one of us is traveling and one of us hangs back at the ranch. Complete control over distractions = gigantic productivity boost.

Re: Are Co-Founders in the Same City Really an Advantage to a Start-Up?

#14

Post by swombat » Mon, Jul 21, 2008, 10:42 AM UTC

1. It's easier to communicate, and thus easier to get things done. (But with modern communications devices, e.g. a screen recorder to capture exactly what's going on my system so that the programmer can how I produce the bug, I remain unconvinced that in-person speed of communication is anything more than a slight advantage that is greatly outweighed by the disadvantages of not being an entirely virtual company.)

That's easy to under-estimate. The best way I've seen this explained is the following: imagine that each time you have a question, there's a ten minute delay to getting an answer. In a start-up, things are constantly shifting, and the product design will need to shift with them, so chances are you'll have a lot of questions. If you have, say, 15 (serial) questions a day, that's 2.5 hours of extra waiting time a day, so more than 25% extra time added to the critical path, roughly. That could make the difference between delivering within your tight budget and failing to do so.

Even worse is the questions you choose not to ask because it's too much overhead. Those can cost you abortive work, or cause you to miss out on a cool idea because you didn't discuss it with your cofounders.

I started my first start-up with a friend in Leicester while I was in London, and while it's definitely possible, that friend is basically my best friend that I've known for ten years, and I took trips up to Leicester regularly, and still we struggled somewhat. Obviously it can be done, but it is an extra hurdle, and you should be aware of it and spend extra effort to make up for the downsides.

For my current start-up, I work from home, and we have one developer in Kansas, but our CEO/product guy is in London too, and I spend a day a week with him, and that's working alright. We don't have offices, but at least we have strong communications between the business and tech sides.

Overall, I support the idea of a completely virtual company, and that's the direction we're trying to take this company in - but you should be fully aware of the challenges of it. It seems you are, so go for it! Good luck! :-)

Re: Are Co-Founders in the Same City Really an Advantage to a Start-Up?

#15

Post by midnightmonster » Mon, Jul 21, 2008, 1:05 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #5

YES THIS IS HUGE TRY TO BE IN THE SAME CITY. Context: I started my company in 2005 from Ann Arbor (which quickly became Chicago) with 2 partners in NYC. Here's what we learned: * It is very hard to get funded if you're not all in one place. Also, my previous startup, from '99-'01, relocated everyone as soon as the A round closed. * All-hands company meetings are very hard to do, because they take the form of intermin…

For the last few months I've been part of a distributed team of 4-5 members. First time for me--all my client work has been remote, but It's usually just me and at most one other person.

I haven't had much trouble working with one other person, like the first poster modern communication tech does it fine for me. People complain that physically meeting only scales to as many people as can fit comfortably in a small conference room, but I'd say meeting electronically doesn't really scale past 2 or 3.

Even with just a 4-5 member team, all hands meetings are indeed phone calls that drag on (we're getting a bit better at keeping them brief).

And "software design debates rapidly turn into a game of telephone"--oh yes. I may be wrong, but I fancy I have an excellent memory for the points and outcomes of such discussions, and it's endlessly frustrating to me to recap over and over when the same thing comes up next week, and the week after, etc.. Actually I don't know if that would be improved by being closer--besides this, the largest software team I've been on was 3 in person, years ago.

On the other hand, the other four or so members of the team all are on the west coast and have met--I'm the only one on the east coast. That's a problem for scheduling meetings sometimes, but I don't feel out of the loop or insecure. Part of that, no doubt, is that I'm not a founder--just a contractor. I care about the product as something I've put substantial work into, but it's not my baby and I'm not worried about someone stealing my baby away. There are four of us contractors building the product for the two not-very-technical founders. I guess that's another hot topic.