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Stop Looking for a Cofounder

dontscale.com

31–40 of 159 posts

Re: Stop Looking for a Cofounder

#31
I've always thought people desperately looking for cofounders on HN, or asking how to find them, are kind of goofy and lame. Has there ever been an even moderately successful company cofounded by strangers who met while slumming the internet for cofounders?

It seems to me that PG almost certainly didn't mean people were better off starting companies with random strangers than they would be starting off alone.

Looking at the big successful companies that were started with multiple founders, it was almost always a group of friends, or co-workers, or acquaintances from school with similar interests, or something like that. There's more to being "cofounders" than just meeting randomly and deciding to start a company together.

Re: Stop Looking for a Cofounder

#32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG wrote that in 2006. Market forces and opportunities around startups have changed astronomically in the past 9 years. It was probably harder for 2 people to start a "growth" business in 2006 than it is for 1 person today.

Yes, the OP makes that point as well and it's also very relevant. PG's point on that issue is dated. Today we have a "stack" that automates a lot of the grunt work: ZenPayroll, Clerky, Stripe, etc. A single founder can just set up a business and run it using these services to do a lot of stuff that was once manual. I personally think the single-arity is near. (Title for a blog post I never wrote.) The single-arity wi…

We had that in 2003 with Marcus Frind & PlentyOfFish or Brad Fitzpatrick & Livejournal - or, arguably, in 1995 with Craig Newmark & Craigslist or Pierre Omidyar & E-bay. Multi-founder startups that took off like a rocketship before they took investment include HotOrNot, Google, Facebook, and SnapChat.

It's been possible to do this since the web came out. The problem is that it very much is a lottery, and the median startup usually goes through significant tribulations before striking it big, struggles that make most single founders quit.

Re: Stop Looking for a Cofounder

#33

I believe John is writing for an audience that PG is not addressing. He is taking his lifestyle business approach and saying that it should apply to businesses that are seeking funding and trying to ultimately have an exit, or become a shiny unicorn. This just isn't the right advice for YC style companies.

I think there's a lot of overlap in the two audiences though. Someone who doesn't want a corporate job might say "I should start a startup." Maybe in their head they're thinking a one-man shop, but then they google about startups and read PG's essays about these larger efforts involving fundraising and such, and get deterred from their original (quite do-able) plan.

This article is saying to those people: "Nevermind what you hear, go back to thinking you can do it on your own, because you can. I'm here as proof."

You're right though, for the people who are squarely in the YC/fundraising camp, this article is not speaking to them.

Re: Stop Looking for a Cofounder

#34

> Today’s full-stack engineers have replaced yesterday’s sysadmins, DBAs, and webdevs altogether. Seriously, when is this "full-stack" nonsense going to stop? With the exception of a few geniuses, "full-stack" is just shorthand for "less than mediocre at a lot of different things".

I'm no genius. But when I say I'm a full stack engineer. It means I can create all parts of a technical product from design, mockup, mobile programming, web dev, backend programming, devops, scaling, payment systems, api integrations etc.

Edit: A lot of devs are the same. I know at least 10 without giving it too much thought.

Re: Stop Looking for a Cofounder

#35

> Today’s full-stack engineers have replaced yesterday’s sysadmins, DBAs, and webdevs altogether. Seriously, when is this "full-stack" nonsense going to stop? With the exception of a few geniuses, "full-stack" is just shorthand for "less than mediocre at a lot of different things".

But your suggestion still reads fine! Let's insert it:

> Today’s "less than mediocre at a lot of different things" engineers have replaced yesterday’s sysadmins, DBAs, and webdevs altogether.

The OP's point still stands! So I don't see what you're on about :-P

Re: Stop Looking for a Cofounder

#36
post #2

"If you’re unable to convince friends to start a business with you, PG says it’s a vote of no confidence. But, what if you’re like me and you don’t have a lot of entrepreneurial friends? Or, maybe you do, but they don’t want to work on your ideas? It doesn’t really matter what your friends think of your ideas or you in regards to starting a business–the votes that count come in the form of paying customers. Since it’…

[deleted]

Re: Stop Looking for a Cofounder

#37

I've always thought people desperately looking for cofounders on HN, or asking how to find them, are kind of goofy and lame. Has there ever been an even moderately successful company cofounded by strangers who met while slumming the internet for cofounders? It seems to me that PG almost certainly didn't mean people were better off starting companies with random strangers than they would be starting off alone. Looking…

how did you and your cofounder meet?

Re: Stop Looking for a Cofounder

#38
post #7

> Today’s full-stack engineers have replaced yesterday’s sysadmins, DBAs, and webdevs altogether. Seriously, when is this "full-stack" nonsense going to stop? With the exception of a few geniuses, "full-stack" is just shorthand for "less than mediocre at a lot of different things".

I've seen people promote themselves as full-stack engineers who literally just spent three months studying Ruby on Rails and some JavaScript and don't actually know any true front-end development or back-end development. I've found that people who might actually qualify for the title (and they do exist) generally don't use it to describe themselves.

It's all relative but I think a lot of us have the problem of puffing ourselves up whilst knocking others down.

I'm multifaceted but folks just assume I'm hiding weakness.

Also, at least in London, full-stack pays a lot less than devops.

Re: Stop Looking for a Cofounder

#39

PG context of a startup is a company that has the potential to make it into a leading stock market index. Anything else is considered a "life style" business and not within YC or most other VC's scope of interest for funding.

Uh, no. That's not what PG said, and if he ever used the term "lifestyle" he didn't mean it that way.

Most companies YC funds do not have the potential to be on a stock market index, because they are features as much as products at that stage and often addressing smaller markets. They are still startups.

YC and VC are very particular avenues for startups, but they are not what DEFINES a startup. YC and VC are the sillicon valley model and that is really actually a small part of the total startup ecosystem, though it is the one that makes the most noise.

Re: Stop Looking for a Cofounder

#40
post #24
post #17

I'm leaning this way now myself, after previously believing that co-founders were essential and prior to that being dubious about their value. Two things I've seen kill startups are bad cofounder relationships, and Venture Capitalists. Almost 50-50, with VCs in the lead because they cause a lot of the bad co-founder relationships. The person you are likely to make your cofounder should probably be your first employee…

Couples live together for years before getting married There's a well-founded point of view that this is not a good thing for a strong marriage.

I recall seeing some reporting on research about this. The problem that I had with that study, is that it seemed to be working from the assumption that decision of whether or not to cohabitate before marriage was akin to a coin flip for the population. The study controlled for a couple factors like education and claimed religious and political affiliation, but I contend that these controls are insufficiently granular to capture potential fundamental worldview differences[1]. Therefore, I contend that the conclusion that the decision of whether or not to cohabitate is the primary causal factor (rather than merely an indicator of an unidentified effect) is invalid because the two groups are unlikely to be sufficiently similar for outcomes to be assumed to be directly transferrable.

[1] For instance, there are portions of the republican party that would not condone the decision of a couple to live together before marrying (e.g. many of the religious conservatives), but others that would be expected to tend to be indifferent (e.g. much of the business and libertarian contingent). The same logic extends to claimed religious affiliation. For instance, I think that the Catholic Church's official stance would be against cohabitation before marriage, but among people who identify as Catholic, there are varying degrees to which the certain official policies are considered practical and/or legitimate. Keep in mind, lapsed Catholics/Jews/Muslims/Protestants/etc that still identify culturally with a religious group are counted as among those groups under the methodology. Overall, I would have felt more comfortable with the legitimacy of the conclusion if instead of looking for rough indicators of attitudes toward pre-marital cohabitation, they would have just chosen a few cohorts, and directly asked what their attitudes toward pre-marital cohabitation were, and then controlled for that factor.

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