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How to Find the Right Co-Founders

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Re: How to Find the Right Co-Founders

#21

Post by alexanderss »

sergiotapia wrote: post #9
netcan wrote: post #8

Common wisdom is that cofounders should be sought early on. However, this is not the only approach. The ideal cofounder is a socially awkward genius, a proverbial Wozniak. He is capable of long hours, engineering feats and brilliant work. Such a man is hard to seduce, by traditional means. So, finding your Woz is one problem. An even trickier problem is ensnaring him. This requires some craftiness. One thing to avoid…

What the fuck am I reading?

Seriously, this is what gives Hacker News a bad name.

Re: How to Find the Right Co-Founders

#23

Post by stuckFounder »

netcan wrote: post #8

Common wisdom is that cofounders should be sought early on. However, this is not the only approach. The ideal cofounder is a socially awkward genius, a proverbial Wozniak. He is capable of long hours, engineering feats and brilliant work. Such a man is hard to seduce, by traditional means. So, finding your Woz is one problem. An even trickier problem is ensnaring him. This requires some craftiness. One thing to avoid…

There is some truths about humanity in these comments. The downvoters haven't thought this through.

Re: How to Find the Right Co-Founders

#26

Post by beachstartup »

smilliken wrote: post #17
idlewords wrote: post #12

"Co-founders Skills are the First Derivative of the Business Model Canvas" My Internet safety helmet snapped shut after that line.

You're right, it really should be expressed the other way: integrate skill with respect to time and you get the company's business model. Presumably skill is a vector-valued function that traces out the company's core competencies over time, and naturally the "Business Model Canvas" is a surface that represents the accumulated area along this function. The point the article is making is a corollary of this. You want…

uh, right. in english, is you want to find people you can actually work day to day with, who are actually capable of learning things and doing things on time while communicating problems.

in reality this tends to be the following kind of people:

* generally not your childhood friends, though i've given contract work to childhood friends and it turned out fine.

* professional acquaintances / previous coworkers / someone you've seen work on a day to day basis

* people you've talked with on irc for years and who aren't insane

* major contributors to open source software you use

* a reference from someone in an entrepreneurial network

Re: How to Find the Right Co-Founders

#27

Post by netcan »

stuckFounder wrote: post #23
netcan wrote: post #8

Common wisdom is that cofounders should be sought early on. However, this is not the only approach. The ideal cofounder is a socially awkward genius, a proverbial Wozniak. He is capable of long hours, engineering feats and brilliant work. Such a man is hard to seduce, by traditional means. So, finding your Woz is one problem. An even trickier problem is ensnaring him. This requires some craftiness. One thing to avoid…

There is some truths about humanity in these comments. The downvoters haven't thought this through.

does that make me a martyr?

Re: How to Find the Right Co-Founders

#29

Post by nostrademons »

beachstartup wrote: post #26
smilliken wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, it really should be expressed the other way: integrate skill with respect to time and you get the company's business model. Presumably skill is a vector-valued function that traces out the company's core competencies over time, and naturally the "Business Model Canvas" is a surface that represents the accumulated area along this function. The point the article is making is a corollary of this. You want…

uh, right. in english, is you want to find people you can actually work day to day with, who are actually capable of learning things and doing things on time while communicating problems. in reality this tends to be the following kind of people: * generally not your childhood friends, though i've given contract work to childhood friends and it turned out fine. * professional acquaintances / previous coworkers / someo…

The interesting thing I've noticed about cofounders is that basically every rule about cofounders has been broken by at least one billion-dollar startup:

"Don't be a single founder"? E-bay.

"Don't do a shotgun wedding. The founders have to have known each other for a while and worked on projects together before they jump into the stress of a startup"? DropBox (met through a mutual classmate's introduction after Drew's first YC application) and GitHub (met at a networking meetup).

"Don't do an uneven equity split"? Microsoft, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, Netscape.

"Don't be an asshole"? Apple, Oracle, SnapChat.

"Make sure everyone's willing to quit their day job or not return to school"? Apple (Steve Wozniak initially wasn't willing to leave HP until their VC convinced him), Google (Larry and Sergey tried to sell the company and finish their Ph.Ds, but nobody was willing to buy at the price they wanted, "Get a technical cofounder"? This one's harder, the only companies I can think of are Auctomatic (which had technical cofounders after it merged with the Collison brothers), Digg (which didn't do so well), and Travelocity (which was a spin-off of American Airlines).

This doesn't mean the rules are invalid, but it does point out how many exceptions there are. I think that usually a good test is simply that it feels right, that you want to work with that person.

Re: How to Find the Right Co-Founders

#30

Post by lowglow »

sblank wrote: post #28
lowglow wrote: post #4

Just so everyone is aware, Steve has ghost writers. This may or may not have actually been written by him.

really? I'd love to meet them.

Hi Steve. :) Yes, If I can remember the young woman's name I'll let you know. She had brunette hair IIRC.

[edit] To further that, if you're telling the truth, then I can't imagine why someone would lie about having that job.

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