I will tell you why it's so freaking hard for single founders: It's so freaking lonely

Here's Sting's take on the issue: http://youtube.com/watch?v=cffpdZIFjxc

good sociologist type q's raised here.

could this 'loneliness' be an indicator of 'personality' as well as being a single founder? For instance are you (anyone) energised in the presence of crowds? (for me, no). Variations in founder personality types come into play here.

could also be an indicator of how many 'related/non-related' social groups you inhabit. Do you meet others in other social contexts? I mix in 3-4 non startup groups, thats more than enough.

There are definite advantages of working in groups of like minded. The sharing of knowledge, contacts, protection ~ I'm primarily thinking of how other ape-like creatures work/live, passing on knowledge & skills. Doesn't the web allow this kind of behaviour virtually?

i've been in this situation before and in general, i agree. and there's a similar kind of suckage being the only technical guy in a startup (i've run a startup for a couple years with a non-technical guy -- smart, but not a hacker.)

in my case, i'm working on a new idea alone at the moment while i find the right cofounder. i've found that a good compromise that still allows you forward progress is to hang out with people who are in the same boat, even if you're not working on the same stuff. i worked over the summer with a couple yc guys who were also starting their own thing and it was great to have other people to bounce ideas off of and frankly to have other people who were stuck inside on friday nights or up at 3am (welcome to the startup world, kids -- often not as glamorous as you'd hope :)) when everyone else is out drinking. it didn't matter that we weren't working on the same stuff -- there was still that esprit de corps and a shoulder to tap when you're working on something cool.

i think it's just the being-in-a-room-by-yourself that sucks, especially if you have roommates on a completely different schedule. and i think it's worth waiting for the right cofounder, even if that means you have to hack the prototype or even launch a beta by yourself -- more startups implode for people reasons than anything else.

there's hope; a good friend of mine has been running his own show for a while after his cofounder left and he's doing fine (but works in an office with other entrepreneurial types), and founders at work has numerous examples of people who had to hoof it on their own for a period of time and did ok (evan williams, a bunch of others).

so if you're in this situation, just get some moral support and keep making forward progress until you find the right cofounder. good luck!

-drew

"Shared Struggle" is one of the most compelling reasons for doing startups. A small ragtag band of hackers battling the odds.

When you're trying to do it alone there's the feeling that even if you did make it no one would know how hard it was.

Besides, who's going to write the tell-all memoir about the "real" you?

I'm running an open-source software startup (apparently one of the three entrepreneurs who read this site and don't care about web apps), and I get plenty of interaction from my community. My problem is that no one else knows the code base or the problem space nearly as well as I do, which means the majority of my technical decisions are made with essentially no feedback.

I don't have problems with loneliness, and never really did even before I had an active community; I just have problems making competent decisions, especially since I'm a sysadmin turned developer, so I'm a bit out of water doing a software startup.

All you web guys need to quit yer complaining; at least you've got thousands of other entrepreneurs who are in the same boat. There is almost no one else in the sysadmin space, and pretty much everyone's eyes just glaze over when I mention that I'm working on infrastructure, not AJAXy web 2.0 bling.